Django REST Framework - Serializer data failure with request data

I wanted to have a serializer that will read as fields object in linked models, but store as pk value for linked object. Something like a nested model with depth=1

, but with more flexibility for a nested model. Essentialy I need the following query structure

GET child / {id}

{
    "id": 1,
    "name": "child",
    "parent": {
        "id": 1,
        "name": "parent"
    }
}

      

        
        
        
      

    

POST child / {id}

{
    "id": 1,
    "name": "child",
    "parent": 1
}

      

        
        
        
      

    

So, I wrote the following serializers:

# models.py
class Parent(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=255)


class Child(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=255)
    parent = models.ForeignKey(Parent)

# serializers.py
class ParentSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    """Write as pk, read as object"""
    class Meta:
        model = models.Parent
        fields = ('id', 'name')

    def to_internal_value(self, data):
        return self.Meta.model.objects.get(pk=data)


class ChildSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    parent = ParentSerializer()

    class Meta:
        model = models.Child
        fields = ('id', 'name', 'parent')

      

        
        
        
      

    

This works almost as expected, but the child serializer does not work when passing the request. To illustrate the problem:

# This works great! everything as expected
parent = Parent.objects.create(name='parent')
data = {'name': 'child', 'parent': parent.pk}
serializer = ChildSerializer(None, data=data)
serializer.is_valid()
serializer.save()

# This borks
data = QueryDict('name={0}&parent={1}'.format('child', parent.pk))
serializer = ChildSerializer(None, data=data)
serializer.is_valid()
serializer.save()

TypeError: int() argument must be a string, a bytes-like object or a number, not 'dict'

      

        
        
        
      

    

As a workaround, I forced to ChildSerializer

convert the QueryDicts to normal dictionaries, but I would still like to know why this is above and if there is a better option for this type of API structure.