django rest framework: <object> is not JSON serializable

Question

I have installed the 'us' module (https://pypi.python.org/pypi/us) to get the US states. It prints the state list. I want to show this in an API in the following format.

{
    "states": [
        {
            "state_code":"CA",
            "state_name":"California"
        },
        {
            "state_code":"AL",
            "state_name":"Alabama"
        }
    ]
}

Now showing the following error.

TypeError at /api/v1/us/states
<State:Alabama> is not JSON serializable

views.py

@api_view(['GET'])
def get_all_states(request):
    states = us.states.STATES
    print (states)
    return Response({'states':states})

When I print the states, It has the following format.

[<State:Alabama>, <State:Alaska>, <State:Arizona>, <State:Arkansas>, <State:California>, <State:Colorado>, <State:Connecticut>, <State:Delaware>  <State:West Virginia>, <State:Wisconsin>, <State:Wyoming>]

urls.py

urlpatterns = [
    url(r'^us/states', get_all_states),
]

I am not using any serializer for this. Is there anyway to iterate over the states and get the formatted states data?

simplyharsh · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-21 14:48:16Z

6

When you return a dict in Response, django considers and returns it as application/json content-typed response. It uses json library to serialize it. A dict is serializable but a State object is not. You need to inflate it yourself. Something like this.

@api_view(['GET'])
def get_all_states(request):
    states = [{'state_code': x.abbr, 'state_name': x.name} for x in us.states.STATES]
    print (states)
    return Response({'states': states})

As all you need is sort of static data, its always a good idea to cache it. Or inflate it once so that its not repeated on every request.

US_STATES = [{'state_code': x.abbr, 'state_name': x.name} for x in us.states.STATES]

@api_view(['GET'])
def get_all_states(request):
    return Response({'states': US_STATES})

Happy Coding.

edited Mar 21, 2017 at 14:48

answered Mar 21, 2017 at 14:40

simplyharsh

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