django: control json serialization
- by abolotnov
Is there a way to control json serialization in django? Simple code below will return serialized object in json:
co = Collection.objects.all()
c = serializers.serialize('json',co)
The json will look similar to this:
[
{
"pk": 1,
"model": "picviewer.collection",
"fields": {
"urlName": "architecture",
"name": "\u0413\u043e\u0440\u043e\u0434 \u0438 \u0430\u0440\u0445\u0438\u0442\u0435\u043a\u0442\u0443\u0440\u0430",
"sortOrder": 0
}
},
{
"pk": 2,
"model": "picviewer.collection",
"fields": {
"urlName": "nature",
"name": "\u041f\u0440\u0438\u0440\u043e\u0434\u0430",
"sortOrder": 1
}
},
{
"pk": 3,
"model": "picviewer.collection",
"fields": {
"urlName": "objects",
"name": "\u041e\u0431\u044a\u0435\u043a\u0442\u044b \u0438 \u043d\u0430\u0442\u044e\u0440\u043c\u043e\u0440\u0442",
"sortOrder": 2
}
}
]
You can see it's serializing it in a way that you are able to re-create the whole model, shall you want to do this at some point - fair enough, but not very handy for simple JS ajax in my case: I want bring the traffic to minimum and make the whole thing little clearer.
What I did is I created a view that passes the object to a .json template and the template will do something like this to generate "nicer" json output:
[
{% if collections %}
{% for c in collections %}
{"id": {{c.id}},"sortOrder": {{c.sortOrder}},"name": "{{c.name}}","urlName": "{{c.urlName}}"}{% if not forloop.last %},{% endif %}
{% endfor %}
{% endif %}
]
This does work and the output is much (?) nicer:
[
{
"id": 1,
"sortOrder": 0,
"name": "????? ? ???????????",
"urlName": "architecture"
},
{
"id": 2,
"sortOrder": 1,
"name": "???????",
"urlName": "nature"
},
{
"id": 3,
"sortOrder": 2,
"name": "??????? ? ?????????",
"urlName": "objects"
}
]
However, I'm bothered by the fast that my solution uses templates (an extra step in processing and possible performance impact) and it will take manual work to maintain shall I update the model, for example.
I'm thinking json generating should be part of the model (correct me if I'm wrong) and done with either native python-json and django implementation but can't figure how to make it strip the bits that I don't want.
One more thing - even when I restrict it to a set of fields to serialize, it will keep the id always outside the element container and instead present it as "pk" outside of it.
