Return the current user with Django Rest Framework

With something like this you're probably best off breaking out of the generic views and writing the view yourself.

@api_view(['GET'])
def current_user(request):
    serializer = UserSerializer(request.user)
    return Response(serializer.data)

You could also do the same thing using a class based view like so...

class CurrentUserView(APIView):
    def get(self, request):
        serializer = UserSerializer(request.user)
        return Response(serializer.data)

Of course, there's also no requirement that you use a serializer, you could equally well just pull out the fields you need from the user instance.

@api_view(['GET'])
def current_user(request):
    user = request.user
    return Response({
        'username': user.username,
        'email': user.email,
        ...
    })

Hope that helps.

The best way is to use the power of viewsets.ModelViewSet like so:

class UserViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
    queryset = User.objects.all()
    serializer_class = UserSerializer

    def get_object(self):
        pk = self.kwargs.get('pk')

        if pk == "current":
            return self.request.user

        return super(UserViewSet, self).get_object()

viewsets.ModelViewSet is a combination of mixins.CreateModelMixin + mixins.RetrieveModelMixin + mixins.UpdateModelMixin + mixins.DestroyModelMixin + mixins.ListModelMixin + viewsets.GenericViewSet. If you need just list all or get particular user including currently authenticated you need just replace it like this

class UserViewSet(mixins.RetrieveModelMixin, mixins.ListModelMixin, viewsets.GenericViewSet):
    # ...