Django serializer for one object

Question

I'm trying to figure out a way to serialize some Django model object to JSON format, something like:

j = Job.objects.get(pk=1)
##############################################
#a way to get the JSON for that j variable???
##############################################

I don't want want:

from django.core import serializers
serializers.serialize('json', Job.objects.get(pk=1),ensure_ascii=False)

Because it returns JSON array, not a single object representation.

Any ideas?

One way I'm thinking of: is to find a way to get a hash(attribute,value) of the object and then use simplejson to get the JSON representation of it, however I don't know how to get that hash.

Answer 1

The hash you are looking for should be in the object's __dict__ attribute:

>>> import json
>>> j = Job.objects.get(pk=1)
>>> json.dumps(j.__dict__)

Answer 2

How about just massaging what you get back from serializers.serialize? It is not that hard to trim off the square brackets from the front and back of the result.

job = Job.objects.get(pk=1)
array_result = serializers.serialize('json', [job], ensure_ascii=False)
just_object_result = array_result[1:-1]

Not a fancy answer but it will give you just the object in json notation.