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Metadata ​

Metadata provides information about your API, such as the supported HTTP methods, expected request formats, and details about the serializers and fields used by a view. This is often accessed via the HTTP OPTIONS method.

When a client sends an OPTIONS request to an endpoint, DRF responds with a dictionary of metadata, which can be used to dynamically generate forms or documentation.

How it works ​

By default, an OPTIONS request returns metadata containing:

  • name: View name.
  • description: View description (from the docstring).
  • renders: List of supported media types for responses.
  • parses: List of supported media types for request data.
  • actions: Detailed information about the expected input fields for POST and PUT methods.

Setting Metadata Classes ​

You can configure the metadata class globally in your settings.py:

python
REST_FRAMEWORK = {
    'DEFAULT_METADATA_CLASS': 'rest_framework.metadata.SimpleMetadata'
}

Or you can configure it on a per-view basis:

Class-Based Views ​

python
from rest_framework.metadata import SimpleMetadata
from rest_framework.views import APIView

class ExampleView(APIView):
    metadata_class = SimpleMetadata

To completely disable metadata for a view, set metadata_class to None.

Custom Metadata ​

You can create a custom metadata class to change the information returned by OPTIONS requests. Subclass BaseMetadata and implement the determine_metadata(self, request, view) method.

python
from rest_framework.metadata import BaseMetadata

class CustomMetadata(BaseMetadata):
    def determine_metadata(self, request, view):
        return {
            'name': view.get_view_name(),
            'description': view.get_view_description(),
            'custom_field': 'My custom metadata value'
        }