Python JSON serialize a Decimal object

Question

I have a Decimal(\'3.9\') as part of an object, and wish to encode this to a JSON string which should look like {\'x\': 3.9}. I don\'t care about p

Answer 1

3.9 can not be exactly represented in IEEE floats, it will always come as 3.8999999999999999, e.g. try print repr(3.9), you can read more about it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_point
http://docs.sun.com/source/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html

So if you don't want float, only option you have to send it as string, and to allow automatic conversion of decimal objects to JSON, do something like this:

import decimal
from django.utils import simplejson

def json_encode_decimal(obj):
    if isinstance(obj, decimal.Decimal):
        return str(obj)
    raise TypeError(repr(obj) + " is not JSON serializable")

d = decimal.Decimal('3.5')
print simplejson.dumps([d], default=json_encode_decimal)