Disable a method in a ViewSet, django-rest-framework

The definition of ModelViewSet is:

class ModelViewSet(mixins.CreateModelMixin, 
                   mixins.RetrieveModelMixin, 
                   mixins.UpdateModelMixin,
                   mixins.DestroyModelMixin,
                   mixins.ListModelMixin,
                   GenericViewSet)

So rather than extending ModelViewSet, why not just use whatever you need? So for example:

from rest_framework import viewsets, mixins

class SampleViewSet(mixins.RetrieveModelMixin,
                    mixins.UpdateModelMixin,
                    mixins.DestroyModelMixin,
                    viewsets.GenericViewSet):
    ...

With this approach, the router should only generate routes for the included methods.

Reference:

ModelViewSet

You could keep using viewsets.ModelViewSet and define http_method_names on your ViewSet.

Example

class SampleViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
    queryset = api_models.Sample.objects.all()
    serializer_class = api_serializers.SampleSerializer
    http_method_names = ['get', 'post', 'head']

Once you add http_method_names, you will not be able to do put and patch anymore.

If you want put but don't want patch, you can keep http_method_names = ['get', 'post', 'head', 'put']

Internally, DRF Views extend from Django CBV. Django CBV has an attribute called http_method_names. So you can use http_method_names with DRF views too.

[Shameless Plug]: If this answer was helpful, you will like my series of posts on DRF at https://www.agiliq.com/blog/2019/04/drf-polls/.

Although it's been a while for this post, I suddenly found out that actually there is a way to disable those functions, you can edit it in the views.py directly.

Source: https://www.django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/viewsets/#viewset-actions

from rest_framework import viewsets, status
from rest_framework.response import Response

class NameThisClassWhateverYouWantViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):

    def create(self, request):
        response = {'message': 'Create function is not offered in this path.'}
        return Response(response, status=status.HTTP_403_FORBIDDEN)

    def update(self, request, pk=None):
        response = {'message': 'Update function is not offered in this path.'}
        return Response(response, status=status.HTTP_403_FORBIDDEN)

    def partial_update(self, request, pk=None):
        response = {'message': 'Update function is not offered in this path.'}
        return Response(response, status=status.HTTP_403_FORBIDDEN)

    def destroy(self, request, pk=None):
        response = {'message': 'Delete function is not offered in this path.'}
        return Response(response, status=status.HTTP_403_FORBIDDEN)

If you are trying to disable the PUT method from a DRF viewset, you can create a custom router:

from rest_framework.routers import DefaultRouter

class NoPutRouter(DefaultRouter):
    """
    Router class that disables the PUT method.
    """
    def get_method_map(self, viewset, method_map):

        bound_methods = super().get_method_map(viewset, method_map)

        if 'put' in bound_methods.keys():
            del bound_methods['put']

        return bound_methods

By disabling the method at the router, your api schema documentation will be correct.