Question

Suppose I have a model of a comment in my project:

class Comment(models.Model):
    text = models.TextField(max_length=500, blank=False)
    author = models.ForeignKey(User)

When serialized to JSON using django.core.serializers the author field comes out as:

"author": 1 // use_natural_keys = False
"author": ["someuser"] // use_natural_keys = True

Suppose I want to output the user’s first and last name as well? How would I go about that?

Answer 1

I assume you’re serializing your model in order to transmit it on wire (like in a http response).

django.core.serializers is likely not the way you want to go. A quick approach would be to include a method on the model to return the dictionary you want to be serialized, then use simplejson.dumps to serialize it. E.g.:

def to_json(self):
    return dict(
        author=[self.author.natural_key(), self.author.first_name, self.author.last_name],
        text=self.text,
    )

then just call simplejson.dumps(comment.to_json()).