How to serialize SqlAlchemy result to JSON?

Question

Django has some good automatic serialization of ORM models returned from DB to JSON format.

How to serialize SQLAlchemy query result to JSON format?

I tried

Answer 1

I know this is quite an older post. I took solution given by @SashaB and modified as per my need.

I added following things to it:

1. Field ignore list: A list of fields to be ignored while serializing
2. Field replace list: A dictionary containing field names to be replaced by values while serializing.
3. Removed methods and BaseQuery getting serialized

My code is as follows:

def alchemy_json_encoder(revisit_self = False, fields_to_expand = [], fields_to_ignore = [], fields_to_replace = {}):
   """
   Serialize SQLAlchemy result into JSon
   :param revisit_self: True / False
   :param fields_to_expand: Fields which are to be expanded for including their children and all
   :param fields_to_ignore: Fields to be ignored while encoding
   :param fields_to_replace: Field keys to be replaced by values assigned in dictionary
   :return: Json serialized SQLAlchemy object
   """
   _visited_objs = []
   class AlchemyEncoder(json.JSONEncoder):
      def default(self, obj):
        if isinstance(obj.__class__, DeclarativeMeta):
            # don't re-visit self
            if revisit_self:
                if obj in _visited_objs:
                    return None
                _visited_objs.append(obj)

            # go through each field in this SQLalchemy class
            fields = {}
            for field in [x for x in dir(obj) if not x.startswith('_') and x != 'metadata' and x not in fields_to_ignore]:
                val = obj.__getattribute__(field)
                # is this field method defination, or an SQLalchemy object
                if not hasattr(val, "__call__") and not isinstance(val, BaseQuery):
                    field_name = fields_to_replace[field] if field in fields_to_replace else field
                    # is this field another SQLalchemy object, or a list of SQLalchemy objects?
                    if isinstance(val.__class__, DeclarativeMeta) or \
                            (isinstance(val, list) and len(val) > 0 and isinstance(val[0].__class__, DeclarativeMeta)):
                        # unless we're expanding this field, stop here
                        if field not in fields_to_expand:
                            # not expanding this field: set it to None and continue
                            fields[field_name] = None
                            continue

                    fields[field_name] = val
            # a json-encodable dict
            return fields

        return json.JSONEncoder.default(self, obj)
   return AlchemyEncoder

Hope it helps someone!