How do I JSON serialize a Python dictionary?

Question

I\'m trying to make a Django function for JSON serializing something and returning it in an HttpResponse object.

def json_response(something):
          


        

Answer 1

What about a JsonResponse Class that extends HttpResponse:

from django.http import HttpResponse
from django.utils import simplejson

class JsonResponse(HttpResponse):
    def __init__(self, data):
        content = simplejson.dumps(data,
                                   indent=2,
                                   ensure_ascii=False)
        super(JsonResponse, self).__init__(content=content,
                                           mimetype='application/json; charset=utf8')

Answer 2

Update: Python now has its own json handler, simply use import json instead of using simplejson.

---

The Django serializers module is designed to serialize Django ORM objects. If you want to encode a regular Python dictionary you should use simplejson, which ships with Django in case you don't have it installed already.

import json

def json_response(something):
    return HttpResponse(json.dumps(something))

I'd suggest sending it back with an application/javascript Content-Type header (you could also use application/json but that will prevent you from debugging in your browser):

import json

def json_response(something):
    return HttpResponse(
        json.dumps(something),
        content_type = 'application/javascript; charset=utf8'
    )

Answer 3

In python 2.6 and higher there is a nice JSON library, which has many functions among which is json.dumps() which serializes an object into a string.

So you can do something like this:

import json
print json.dumps({'howdy' : True })

Answer 4

With newer versions of Django you can just use JsonResponse provided by django.http:

from django.http import JsonResponse

def my_view(request):
    json_object = {'howdy': True}
    return JsonResponse(json_object)

You can find more details in the official docs.

Answer 5

import json

my_list = range(1,10) # a list from 1 to 10

with open('theJsonFile.json', 'w') as file_descriptor:

         json.dump(my_list, file_descriptor) #dump not dumps, dumps = dump-string