Question

This one has had me pulling out my hair. I’ve been trying to deserialize JSON in Django for the last couple hours.

I have a function:

    # in index.html
    function updateWidgetData(){  
        var items=[]; 
        for statement here:
            for statement here:
                var item={  
                    id: $j(this).attr('id'),  
                    collapsed: collapsed,  
                    order : i,  
                    column: columnId  
                };  
        items.push(item);  

        var sortorder={ items: items};  

        $j.post('2', 'data='+$j.toJSON(sortorder), function(response)
        {  
            if(response=="success")  
                $j("#console").html('<div class="success">Saved</div>').hide().fadeIn(1000);  
            setTimeout(function(){  
                $j('#console').fadeOut(1000);  
        }, 2000);  
    });

}

And I’m trying to deserialize the JSON in django:

# in views.py
if request.is_ajax():
    for item in serializers.deserialize("json", request.content):
        item = MyObject(id=id, collapsed=collapsed, order=order, column=column)
    return HttpResponse("success")
else:
    ....

And it hasn’t been working. I know this is probably a really trivial question, but I’ve never used JSON before, and I’d really appreciate some help. Thanks!

Answer 1

serializers.deserialize is for deserializing a particular type of JSON – that is, data that was serialized from model instances using serializers.serialize. For your data, you just want the standard simplejson module.

And the second thing wrong is that your response isn’t just JSON – it is an HTTP POST with JSON in the data field. So:

from django.utils import simplejson
data = simplejson.loads(request.POST['data'])