Extracting numerical value from Python Decimal

Question

When I use the python Decimal object simply with something like:

from decimal import *
dec = Decimal('3.432')
print dec

it will print 3.432, just like I want, but if i try to put that same value dec into a json object what I get in the json is Decimal("3.432"). How can I just get the numerical value from decimal?

Answer 1

>>> str(decimal.Decimal('3.1'))
'3.1'

Out-of-the-box JSON uses a few primitive types, like strings, heavily.

Your best bet is to convert your Decimals to strings when creating your JSON document from some Python object.

Convert the strings back to Decimal when converting the JSON document back to a Python object.

Answer 2

You get a Decimal('3.432') in your JSON object? Weird... how?

>>> from decimal import *
>>> import json
>>> json.dumps(Decimal('3.432'))
....
TypeError: Decimal('3.432') is not JSON serializable

In any case, if you are using a Decimal instead of a float, you probably don't want to lose precision by converting it to a float. If that's true, then you have to manage the process yourself by first ensuring you preserve all the data, and dealing with the fact that JSON doesn't understand the Decimal type:

>>> j = json.dumps(str(Decimal('3.000')))
>>> j
'"3.000"'
>>> Decimal(json.loads(j))
Decimal('3.000')

Of course, if you don't really care about the precision (but then why use Decimal?) just convert to a float first, as JSON can handle that. You still won't get a Decimal back later unless you manually convert again from float though...

Edit: Devin Jeanpierre points out the existing support in the json module for decoding float strings as something other than float with the parse_float argument for load(), loads() and custom JSONDecoders. While that would require you first to convert your Decimals to floats when encoding (losing precision) it could solve the second half of the problem a little more cleanly than my more manual approach above (note that it would apply to all floats in your JSON data). You should also be able to create a JSONEncoder subclass to write out the digits for the Decimal without first converting to float, which would let you avoid the loss of precision.

Answer 3

Interesting -- what I get is a TypeError exception (that's with Python 2.6's stock json module -- what are you using?).

The obvious alternative have obvious imperfections:

>>> json.dumps(float(x))
'3.4319999999999999'
>>> json.dumps(str(x))
'"3.432"'

...one can give you a pretty dirty approximation, the other one saddles you with quotes. If either of these issues is acceptable in your application, go ahead, but neither matches you exact spec as posed.

The simplest (but not cleanest!!!) way to do what you want with stock json is to monkeypatch things:

>>> json.encoder.FLOAT_REPR=str
>>> json.dumps(float(x))
'3.432'

The proper/clean way is to make (and use;-) a subclass of json.Encoder which uses str instead of repr on floats -- but that's a non-trivial amount of work, alas.