To implement a recursive serializer using Django Rest Framework (DRF), you will need to create a custom serializer that defines the fields to be included in the serialized data, as well as the relationships between the objects being serialized. Here is an example of a recursive serializer that can be used to serialize a tree-like data structure:

class TreeSerializer(serializers.Serializer):
    name = serializers.CharField()
    children = TreeSerializer(many=True, required=False)
    
    def to_representation(self, instance):
        data = super().to_representation(instance)
        if not data.get('children'):
            data['children'] = []
        return data

To use this serializer, you will need to provide an instance of the object to be serialized, and call the .data attribute to generate the serialized data. For example:

tree = {
    'name': 'Root node',
    'children': [
        {
            'name': 'Child node 1',
            'children': [
                {
                    'name': 'Grandchild node 1',
                },
                {
                    'name': 'Grandchild node 2',
                },
            ],
        },
        {
            'name': 'Child node 2',
            'children': [],
        },
    ],
}

serializer = TreeSerializer(tree)
data = serializer.data

This will generate a nested dictionary representing the tree-like data structure, which can be easily converted to JSON or other formats for use in a REST API. Note that the to_representation() method is used to ensure that any nodes without children are represented as an empty list, rather than a null value.

It is important to note that recursive serializers can be computationally expensive, as they must traverse the entire data structure to generate the serialized output. Therefore, it is recommended to use them only when necessary and to carefully consider the performance implications of using a recursive serializer in your application.