Python serialize objects list to JSON

Question

I am trying to serialize to JSON the __dict__ of an object, which is working fine, until I append objects to one of the instance attribute of my first object:

from json import dumps

class A(object):
    def __init__(self):
        self.b_list = []

class B(object):
    def __init__(self):
        self.x = 'X'
        self.y = 'Y'
    def __repr__(self):
        return dumps(self.__dict__)

a = A()

print dumps(a.__dict__)  # works fine

a.b_list.append(B())

print dumps(a.__dict__)

When calling for the second time dumps, I got the following TypeError:

TypeError: {"y": "Y", "x": "X"} is not JSON serializable

I don't understand why I keep getting this error while I can't see why this is not serializable to JSON.

Answer 1

That's because instances of B are not a simple type. Because you gave B a __repr__ method, the instance is printed as it's JSON representation, but it is not itself a supported JSON type.

Remove the __repr__ method and the traceback is much less confusing:

>>> class A(object):
...     def __init__(self):
...         self.b_list = []
... 
>>> class B(object):
...     def __init__(self):
...         self.x = 'X'
...         self.y = 'Y'
... 
>>> a = A()
>>> a.b_list.append(B())
>>> 
>>> print dumps(a.__dict__)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/Users/mj/Development/Library/buildout.python/parts/opt/lib/python2.7/json/__init__.py", line 243, in dumps
    return _default_encoder.encode(obj)
  File "/Users/mj/Development/Library/buildout.python/parts/opt/lib/python2.7/json/encoder.py", line 207, in encode
    chunks = self.iterencode(o, _one_shot=True)
  File "/Users/mj/Development/Library/buildout.python/parts/opt/lib/python2.7/json/encoder.py", line 270, in iterencode
    return _iterencode(o, 0)
  File "/Users/mj/Development/Library/buildout.python/parts/opt/lib/python2.7/json/encoder.py", line 184, in default
    raise TypeError(repr(o) + " is not JSON serializable")
TypeError: <__main__.B object at 0x10a753e10> is not JSON serializable

Use the default keyword argument to encode custom objects:

def encode_b(obj):
    if isinstance(obj, B):
        return obj.__dict__
    return obj

json.dumps(a, default=encode_b)

Demo:

>>> def encode_b(obj):
...     if isinstance(obj, B):
...         return obj.__dict__
...     return obj
... 
>>> dumps(a.__dict__, default=encode_b)
'{"b_list": [{"y": "Y", "x": "X"}]}'