APIClient POST with data={'content':'string'}: 'string' is packaged into list

[stephanelatil]

When testing my API I have encountered an issue. Consider this code, note that the url is set previously

comment_data = {'content':'This is a comment'}

response = self.client.post(url, comment_data)

Sent to this view

@decorators.action(detail=True, methods=['post'], url_path="post_answer/?", permission_classes=[permissions.IsAuthenticated])
def post_answer(self, request:Request, pk=None):
        data = dict(request.data)
        # add user and comment parent data
        data['relatedQAndA'] = pk
        data['creator'] = request.user
        serializer = CommentSetSerializer(data=data)
        # try to serialize and return 400 in case of error
        if not serializer.is_valid(raise_exception=False):
            return Response(serializer.errors, status=status.HTTP_400_BAD_REQUEST)
        serializer.save()
        # return a nice format
        serializer = CommentGetSerializer(Comment.objects.get(pk=serializer.data['id']))
        return Response(serializer.data, status=status.HTTP_201_CREATED)

This responds with a 400 error: Not a valid string.

When investigating i found that the View does not receive the correct data dict! reponse.data={'content':['This is a comment']} The string has been packaged into a list for some reason.

The current solution I have found is to add format=json parameter to the post.

Any idea why this is happening and is this normal behavior?