Question

I am trying to use Django with jquery UI autocomplete but having trouble sending response.

Here is my code:

def ajax_tags_autocomplete(request):
    """ Autocomplete for tag list """
    beginning_of_title = request.GET.get('term', '')
    tags_found = Tag.objects.values_list('title', flat=True).filter(title__startswith=beginning_of_title)
    return HttpResponse(json.dumps(tags_found), mimetype='application/json')

I get an error:

[u"php"] is not JSON serializable

Why? It is not possible to serialize a list? What should I pass to the serializer, then?

I would be greatful for any advice.

Answer 1

Are you sure it’s actually a list containing unicode objects and not a list containing some database objects? The u"php" might just be the repr() of the object.

Try json.dumps([unicode(t) for t in tags_found]) or json.dumps(map(unicode, tags_found))