How to overcome “datetime.datetime not JSON serializable”?

Question

I have a basic dict as follows:

sample = {}
sample[\'title\'] = \"String\"
sample[\'somedate\'] = somedatetimehere


        

Answer 1

Here is my full solution for converting datetime to JSON and back..

import calendar, datetime, json

def outputJSON(obj):
    """Default JSON serializer."""

    if isinstance(obj, datetime.datetime):
        if obj.utcoffset() is not None:
            obj = obj - obj.utcoffset()

        return obj.strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f')
    return str(obj)

def inputJSON(obj):
    newDic = {}

    for key in obj:
        try:
            if float(key) == int(float(key)):
                newKey = int(key)
            else:
                newKey = float(key)

            newDic[newKey] = obj[key]
            continue
        except ValueError:
            pass

        try:
            newDic[str(key)] = datetime.datetime.strptime(obj[key], '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f')
            continue
        except TypeError:
            pass

        newDic[str(key)] = obj[key]

    return newDic

x = {'Date': datetime.datetime.utcnow(), 34: 89.9, 12.3: 90, 45: 67, 'Extra': 6}

print x

with open('my_dict.json', 'w') as fp:
    json.dump(x, fp, default=outputJSON)

with open('my_dict.json') as f:
    my_dict = json.load(f, object_hook=inputJSON)

print my_dict

Output

{'Date': datetime.datetime(2013, 11, 8, 2, 30, 56, 479727), 34: 89.9, 45: 67, 12.3: 90, 'Extra': 6}
{'Date': datetime.datetime(2013, 11, 8, 2, 30, 56, 479727), 34: 89.9, 45: 67, 12.3: 90, 'Extra': 6}

JSON File

{"Date": "2013-11-08 02:30:56.479727", "34": 89.9, "45": 67, "12.3": 90, "Extra": 6}

This has enabled me to import and export strings, ints, floats and datetime objects. It shouldn't be to hard to extend for other types.

Answer 2

You should use .strftime() method on .datetime.now() method to making it as a serializable method.

Here's an example:

from datetime import datetime

time_dict = {'time': datetime.now().strftime('%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S')}
sample_dict = {'a': 1, 'b': 2}
sample_dict.update(time_dict)
sample_dict

Output:

Out[0]: {'a': 1, 'b': 2, 'time': '2017-10-31T15:16:30'}

Answer 3

If you are using the result in a view be sure to return a proper response. According to the API, jsonify does the following:

Creates a Response with the JSON representation of the given arguments with an application/json mimetype.

To mimic this behavior with json.dumps you have to add a few extra lines of code.

response = make_response(dumps(sample, cls=CustomEncoder))
response.headers['Content-Type'] = 'application/json'
response.headers['mimetype'] = 'application/json'
return response

You should also return a dict to fully replicate jsonify's response. So, the entire file will look like this

from flask import make_response
from json import JSONEncoder, dumps


class CustomEncoder(JSONEncoder):
    def default(self, obj):
        if set(['quantize', 'year']).intersection(dir(obj)):
            return str(obj)
        elif hasattr(obj, 'next'):
            return list(obj)
        return JSONEncoder.default(self, obj)

@app.route('/get_reps/', methods=['GET'])
def get_reps():
    sample = ['some text', <datetime object>, 123]
    response = make_response(dumps({'result': sample}, cls=CustomEncoder))
    response.headers['Content-Type'] = 'application/json'
    response.headers['mimetype'] = 'application/json'
    return response

Answer 4

I got the same error message while writing the serialize decorator inside a Class with sqlalchemy. So instead of :

Class Puppy(Base):
    ...
    @property
    def serialize(self):
        return { 'id':self.id,
                 'date_birth':self.date_birth,
                  ...
                }

I simply borrowed jgbarah's idea of using isoformat() and appended the original value with isoformat(), so that it now looks like:

                  ...
                 'date_birth':self.date_birth.isoformat(),
                  ...

Answer 5

I have just encountered this problem and my solution is to subclass json.JSONEncoder:

from datetime import datetime
import json

class DateTimeEncoder(json.JSONEncoder):
    def default(self, o):
        if isinstance(o, datetime):
            return o.isoformat()

        return json.JSONEncoder.default(self, o)

In your call do something like: json.dumps(yourobj, cls=DateTimeEncoder) The .isoformat() I got from one of the answers above.

Answer 6

You have to supply a custom encoder class with the cls parameter of json.dumps. To quote from the docs:

>>> import json
>>> class ComplexEncoder(json.JSONEncoder):
...     def default(self, obj):
...         if isinstance(obj, complex):
...             return [obj.real, obj.imag]
...         return json.JSONEncoder.default(self, obj)
...
>>> dumps(2 + 1j, cls=ComplexEncoder)
'[2.0, 1.0]'
>>> ComplexEncoder().encode(2 + 1j)
'[2.0, 1.0]'
>>> list(ComplexEncoder().iterencode(2 + 1j))
['[', '2.0', ', ', '1.0', ']']

This uses complex numbers as the example, but you can just as easily create a class to encode dates (except I think JSON is a little fuzzy about dates)