Where's my json data in my incoming django request?

Question

It seems like a simple question, but I've been looking for a couple of hours.

I'm trying to process incoming JSON/Ajax requests with Django/Python.

request.is_ajax() is True on the request, but I have no idea where the payload is with the JSON data

request.POST.dir contains this

['__class__', '__cmp__', '__contains__', '__copy__', '__deepcopy__', '__delattr__',
 '__delitem__', '__dict__', '__doc__', '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattribute__',
'__getitem__', '__gt__', '__hash__', '__init__', '__iter__', '__le__', '__len__',
 '__lt__', '__module__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', 
'__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__str__', '__weakref__', '_assert_mutable', '_encoding', 
'_get_encoding', '_mutable', '_set_encoding', 'appendlist', 'clear', 'copy', 'encoding', 
'fromkeys', 'get', 'getlist', 'has_key', 'items', 'iteritems', 'iterkeys', 'itervalues', 
'keys', 'lists', 'pop', 'popitem', 'setdefault', 'setlist', 'setlistdefault', 'update', 
'urlencode', 'values']

There are apparently no keys in request post keys

When I look at the POST in Firebug, there is json data being sent up in the request.

Answer 1

request.POST is just a dictionary-like object, so just index into it with dict syntax.

Assuming your form field is fred, you could do something like this:

if 'fred' in request.POST:
    mydata = request.POST['fred']

Alternately, use a form object to deal with the POST data.

Answer 2

the HTTP POST payload is just a flat bunch of bytes. Django (like most frameworks) decodes it into a dictionary from either urlencoded parameters, or mime-multipart encoding. if you just dump the JSON data in the POST content, Django won't decode it. either do the JSON decoding from the full POST content (not the dictionary); or put the JSON data into a mime-multipart wrapper.

in short, show the JavaScript code, the problem seems to be there.

Answer 3

If you are posting JSON to Django, I think what you want is request.raw_post_data, this will give you the raw JSON data sent via the post, from there you can process it further.

Here is an example using Javascript/jQuery/jquery-json and Django.

Javascript:

var myEvent = {id: calEvent.id, start: calEvent.start, end: calEvent.end,
                allDay: calEvent.allDay };

$.ajax({
        url: '/event/save-json/',
        type: 'POST',
        contentType: 'application/json; charset=utf-8',
        data: $.toJSON(myEvent),
        dataType: 'text',
        success: function(result) {
            alert(result.Result);
        }
    });

Django:

def save_events_json(request):
if request.is_ajax():
        if request.method == 'POST':
            print 'Raw Data: "%s"' % request.raw_post_data  

    return HttpResponse("OK")

Answer 4

I had the same problem - i've been posting a complex JSON response and I couldn't read my data using the request.POST dictionary.

My JSON POST data was:

//JS code:
//requires json2.js & jquery
var response = {data:[{"a":1, "b":2},{"a":2, "b":2}]}
json_response = JSON.stringify(response); //proper serialization method, read http://bit.ly/MjfiJ
$.post('url',json_response);

In this case you need to use method provided by aurealus. Read the request.raw_post_data and deserialize it with simplejson.

#Django code:
from django.utils import simplejson
def save_data(request):
  if request.method == 'POST':
    json_data = simplejson.loads(request.raw_post_data)
    try:
      data = json_data['data']
    except KeyError:
      HttpResponseServerError("Malformed data!")
    HttpResponse("Got json data")