CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonjsondjango
bryan.blackbee
bryan.blackbee

Reputation: 1954

Get JSON representation of Django model

Let's say I have a Django model

class Book(models.Model): 
     title = models.CharField()
     author = models.ForeignKey(Author)
     is_on_loan = models.BooleanField()

How do I get the JSON representation of the Book? I could easily write something like

import json

def get_json(self):
    json_rep = {}
    json_rep['title'] = self.title
    json_rep['author'] = self.author.full_name
    json_rep['is_on_loan'] = self.is_on_loan
    return json.dumps(json_rep)

But is there a better way?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 4210

Answers (2)

Mad Wombat
Mad Wombat

Reputation: 15105

This is called serializing. There are django native serializers, you can read about them in the docs (https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.9/topics/serialization/), but the basic usage is

from django.core import serializers
data = serializers.serialize("json", YourModel.objects.all())

That said, Django serializers have some limitations that might or might not cause problems for you.

If you are using or considering using Django REST Framework, it has excellent, flexible serializer/deserializer architecture. There are other serializing libraries out there that you might want to google for.

Upvotes: 3

bakkal
bakkal

Reputation: 55448

Yes there is a better way, use the built-in Django JSON serializer

from django.core import serializers
json_data = serializers.serialize('json', Book.objects.all())

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions