Python w/ Stripe: How do I get valid JSON from a charge response?

Question

I have a python wrapper method called succeed that looks like the following:

def succeed(handler, data):
"""Send the given |data| dict as a JSON response in |handler.response|."""
set_headers(handler)
handler.response.write(json.dumps(data))

I am trying to pass the result of a Stripe API call to charge a credit card back to another service using this method. Here is the method call, inside of another class:

succeed(self, dict(success=True, charge_id=charge.id, response=charge))

When I do so, I get a 'charge is not JSON serializable' error. How can I pass all of the charge ID responses along as JSON with this code? Here is the full response:

    TypeError: <Charge charge id=ch_103Tsv2kD9PLZlzDG5ce7TE1 at 0x113003b50> JSON: {
  "amount": 3500, 
  "amount_refunded": 0, 
  "balance_transaction": "xxxxxx", 
  "captured": true, 
  "card": {
    "address_city": null, 
    "address_country": null, 
    "address_line1": null, 
    "address_line1_check": null, 
    "address_line2": null, 
    "address_state": null, 
    "address_zip": null, 
    "address_zip_check": null, 
    "country": "US", 
    "customer": null, 
    "cvc_check": "pass", 
    "exp_month": 5, 
    "exp_year": 2015, 
    "fingerprint": "xxxxxxxxxxxxxx", 
    "last4": "4242", 
    "name": "[email protected]", 
    "object": "card", 
    "type": "Visa"
  }, 
  "created": 1392181282, 
  "currency": "usd", 
  "customer": null, 
  "description": "X0G0 FEOMSI NA", 
  "dispute": null, 
  "failure_code": null, 
  "failure_message": null, 
  "invoice": null, 
  "livemode": false, 
  "metadata": {
    "email": "[email protected]"
  }, 
  "object": "charge", 
  "paid": true, 
  "refunded": false, 
  "refunds": []
}

Answer 1

Use the .to_dict() method to turn a Stripe charge object into a python dictionary.

Serializing a dict is an exercise left to the reader.

---

As an additional fun point, I highly suggest the dir function: It lets you see all the possible attributes and methods.

For example:

>>> import stripe
>>> dir(stripe.Charge)
['__class__', '__cmp__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__', '__dict__', '__doc__', '__eq__', '__format__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getattribute__', '__getitem__', '__gt__', '__hash__', '__init__', '__iter__', '__le__', '__len__', '__lt__', '__module__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__sizeof__', '__str__', '__subclasshook__', '__weakref__', 'all', 'capture', 'class_name', 'class_url', 'clear', 'close_dispute', 'construct_from', 'copy', 'create', 'fromkeys', 'get', 'has_key', 'instance_url', 'items', 'iteritems', 'iterkeys', 'itervalues', 'keys', 'pop', 'popitem', 'refresh', 'refresh_from', 'refund', 'request', 'retrieve', 'save', 'serialize', 'serialize_metadata', 'setdefault', 'stripe_id', 'to_dict', 'update', 'update_dispute', 'values', 'viewitems', 'viewkeys', 'viewvalues']
>>>

From here you can see the to_dict method. You can also see the serialize method, though it's not clear to me what it does.

More docs

Answer 2

Though its late, the following answer may help someone

As per the stripe team to_dict method is deprecated. See here

Since the Stripe object is the inheritance of dict, we can use them as native data type.

Also calling str("Stripe Object") will return JSON representation of the object. See here