How to serialize a regex to json in python?

Question

I'm building an API in python which accepts regexes and needs to be able to serialize the compiled regexes back to the original string in a json response. I've looked around but haven't found an obvious method of accessing the raw regex from a compiled regex:

import re 
regex = re.compile(r".*")
# what now?

One approach I came up with was to create a custom Regex class that mirrors all functionality but provides access to a raw property which I could fallback on when serializing:

import re 

class SerializableRegex(object):
    def __init__(self, regex):
        self.raw = regex 
        self.r = re.compile(regex)
        self.r.__init__(self)

However this doesn't seem to give me access to the methods of a compiled regex.

The last option, which I may have to go with, is simply mirroring all methods in my custom class:

import re 

class SerializableRegex(object):
    def __init__(self, regex):
        self.raw = regex 
        self.r = re.compile(regex)
        self.r.__init__(self)

    def match(self, *args, **kwargs):
         return self.r.match(*args, **kwargs)
    ...

However this seems wholly inelegant. Is there a better solution?

Answer 1

You can access the raw regex string via the pattern property:

import re
regex_str  = '.*'
regex = re.compile(regex_str)
assert(regex_str == regex.pattern)