Django: Reading Array of JSON objects from QueryDict

Question

How do I pass a composite JSON structure via AJAX call from JS and on the server side, read it as a \"very similar\" data structure in python?

I understand that json for

Answer 1

You should stringify your JSON using JSON.stringify(). This will convert the JSON Object into string format so it can be parsed correctly on the other end. On the other end you will need to use json.loads() to "unstringify" the object.

javascript:

var test = [{"id": 1},{"id": 2},{"id": 3}];
$.post(
    "/insert_tc",
    {
      json_data: JSON.stringify(test),
      "type": 'clone',
      "csrfmiddlewaretoken": $csrf_token
    },  
    function(json) {
        //CALLBACK
    },
    "json"
);  

View:

import json
def insert_tc(request):
    if request.method == 'POST':       
        ret = request.POST
        type = ret['type']
        list = json.loads(ret['json_data'])

Answer 2

This is actually jQuery, not Django, being strange. Your test variable does not contain JSON, but actual JS objects. jQuery, for reasons best known to itself, parses this into some very weird format before posting, hence the result you get. If you did this instead (note the quotes around the whole thing):

var test = '[{"id": 1},{"id": 2},{"id": 3}]';

you'd find you get very nearly the QueryDict you expect: the only thing you then need to do is to call json.loads(ret['json_data']).

Also for reasons that I can't understand. jQuery doesn't contain any functionality to convert your array of objects to JSON. You'll need to find a plugin or separate library for that.