Django object is not JSON serializable

Question

I have the following code for serializing the queryset;

def render_to_response(self, context, **response_kwargs):

    return HttpResponse(json.simplejson.dumps(list(self.get_queryset())),
                        mimetype="application/json")

And following is my get_querset()

[{'product': <Product: hederello ()>, u'_id': u'9802', u'_source': {u'code': u'23981', u'facilities': [{u'facility': {u'name': {u'fr': u'G\xe9n\xe9ral', u'en': u'General'}, u'value': {u'fr': [u'bar', u'r\xe9ception ouverte 24h/24', u'chambres non-fumeurs', u'chambres familiales',.........]}]

Which I need to serialize. But it says not able to serialize the <Product: hederello ()>. Because list composed of both django objects and dicts. Any ideas ?

Answer 1

Hello @kartik,

simplejson and json don't work with django objects well.

Django's built-in serializers can only serialize querysets filled with django objects:

data = serializers.serialize('json', self.get_queryset())
return HttpResponse(data, content_type="application/json")

In your case, self.get_queryset() contains a mix of django objects and dicts inside.

One option is to get rid of model instances in the self.get_queryset() and replace them with dicts using model_to_dict:

from django.forms.models import model_to_dict

data = self.get_queryset()

for item in data:
   item['product'] = model_to_dict(item['product'])

return HttpResponse(json.simplejson.dumps(data), mimetype="application/json")

Hope that helps!!

Thank You!!