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

This is what I have, extracted from our class

class CommonJSONEncoder(json.JSONEncoder):

    """
    Common JSON Encoder
    json.dumps(myString, cls=CommonJSONEncoder)
    """

    def default(self, obj):

        if isinstance(obj, decimal.Decimal):
            return {'type{decimal}': str(obj)}

class CommonJSONDecoder(json.JSONDecoder):

    """
    Common JSON Encoder
    json.loads(myString, cls=CommonJSONEncoder)
    """

    @classmethod
    def object_hook(cls, obj):
        for key in obj:
            if isinstance(key, six.string_types):
                if 'type{decimal}' == key:
                    try:
                        return decimal.Decimal(obj[key])
                    except:
                        pass

    def __init__(self, **kwargs):
        kwargs['object_hook'] = self.object_hook
        super(CommonJSONDecoder, self).__init__(**kwargs)

Which passes unittest:

def test_encode_and_decode_decimal(self):
    obj = Decimal('1.11')
    result = json.dumps(obj, cls=CommonJSONEncoder)
    self.assertTrue('type{decimal}' in result)
    new_obj = json.loads(result, cls=CommonJSONDecoder)
    self.assertEqual(new_obj, obj)

    obj = {'test': Decimal('1.11')}
    result = json.dumps(obj, cls=CommonJSONEncoder)
    self.assertTrue('type{decimal}' in result)
    new_obj = json.loads(result, cls=CommonJSONDecoder)
    self.assertEqual(new_obj, obj)

    obj = {'test': {'abc': Decimal('1.11')}}
    result = json.dumps(obj, cls=CommonJSONEncoder)
    self.assertTrue('type{decimal}' in result)
    new_obj = json.loads(result, cls=CommonJSONDecoder)
    self.assertEqual(new_obj, obj)

Answer 2

I tried switching from simplejson to builtin json for GAE 2.7, and had issues with the decimal. If default returned str(o) there were quotes (because _iterencode calls _iterencode on the results of default), and float(o) would remove trailing 0.

If default returns an object of a class that inherits from float (or anything that calls repr without additional formatting) and has a custom __repr__ method, it seems to work like I want it to.

import json
from decimal import Decimal

class fakefloat(float):
    def __init__(self, value):
        self._value = value
    def __repr__(self):
        return str(self._value)

def defaultencode(o):
    if isinstance(o, Decimal):
        # Subclass float with custom repr?
        return fakefloat(o)
    raise TypeError(repr(o) + " is not JSON serializable")

json.dumps([10.20, "10.20", Decimal('10.20')], default=defaultencode)
'[10.2, "10.20", 10.20]'

Answer 3

For Django users:

Recently came across TypeError: Decimal('2337.00') is not JSON serializable while JSON encoding i.e. json.dumps(data)

Solution:

# converts Decimal, Datetime, UUIDs to str for Encoding
from django.core.serializers.json import DjangoJSONEncoder  

json.dumps(response.data, cls=DjangoJSONEncoder)

But, now the Decimal value will be a string, now we can explicitly set the decimal/float value parser when decoding data, using parse_float option in json.loads:

import decimal 

data = json.loads(data, parse_float=decimal.Decimal) # default is float(num_str)

Answer 4

You can create a custom JSON encoder as per your requirement.

import json
from datetime import datetime, date
from time import time, struct_time, mktime
import decimal

class CustomJSONEncoder(json.JSONEncoder):
    def default(self, o):
        if isinstance(o, datetime):
            return str(o)
        if isinstance(o, date):
            return str(o)
        if isinstance(o, decimal.Decimal):
            return float(o)
        if isinstance(o, struct_time):
            return datetime.fromtimestamp(mktime(o))
        # Any other serializer if needed
        return super(CustomJSONEncoder, self).default(o)

The Decoder can be called like this,

import json
from decimal import Decimal
json.dumps({'x': Decimal('3.9')}, cls=CustomJSONEncoder)

and the output will be:

>>'{"x": 3.9}'

Answer 5

For anybody that wants a quick solution here is how I removed Decimal from my queries in Django

total_development_cost_var = process_assumption_objects.values('total_development_cost').aggregate(sum_dev = Sum('total_development_cost', output_field=FloatField()))
total_development_cost_var = list(total_development_cost_var.values())

• Step 1: use , output_field=FloatField() in you r query
• Step 2: use list eg list(total_development_cost_var.values())

Hope it helps

Answer 6

Simplejson 2.1 and higher has native support for Decimal type:

>>> json.dumps(Decimal('3.9'), use_decimal=True)
'3.9'

Note that use_decimal is True by default:

def dumps(obj, skipkeys=False, ensure_ascii=True, check_circular=True,
    allow_nan=True, cls=None, indent=None, separators=None,
    encoding='utf-8', default=None, use_decimal=True,
    namedtuple_as_object=True, tuple_as_array=True,
    bigint_as_string=False, sort_keys=False, item_sort_key=None,
    for_json=False, ignore_nan=False, **kw):

So:

>>> json.dumps(Decimal('3.9'))
'3.9'

Hopefully, this feature will be included in standard library.