Question

I know in javascript there is the stringify command, but is there something like this in python for pyramid applications? Right now I have a view callable that takes an uploaded stl file and parses it into a format as such. data= [[[x1,x2,x3],...],[[v1,v2,v3],...]] How can I convert this into a JSON string so that it can be stored in an SQLite database? Can I insert the javascript stringify command into my views.py file? Is there an easier way to do this?

Answer 1

You can use the json module to do this:

 import json
 data_str = json.dumps(data)

There are other array representations that can be stored in a database as well (see pickle).

However, if you’re actually constructing a database, you should know that’s it’s considered a violation of basic database principles (first normal form) to store multiple data in a single value in a relational database. What you should do is decompose the array into rows (and possibly separate tables) and store a single value in each “cell”. That will allow you to query and analyze the data using SQL.

If you’re not trying to build an actual database (if the array is completely opaque to your application and you’ll never want to search, sort, aggregate, or report by the values inside the array) you don’t need to worry so much about normal form but you may also find that you don’t need the overhead of an SQL database.