Python 3.x cannot serialize Decimal() to JSON

Question

I asked this question earlier, and it was marked as duplicate of this , but the accepted answer does not work and even pylint shows that there are errors in the code.

What I want to do:

from decimal import Decimal
import json

thang = {
    'Items': [{'contact_id': Decimal('2'), 'street_name': 'Asdasd'}, {'contact_id': Decimal('1'), 'name': 'Lukas', 'customer_id': Decimal('1')}],
     'Count': 2}

print(json.dumps(thang))

This throws: TypeError: Object of type 'Decimal' is not JSON serializable

So I tried the linked answer :

from decimal import Decimal
import json

thang = {
    'Items': [{'contact_id': Decimal('2'), 'street_name': 'Asdasd'}, {'contact_id': Decimal('1'), 'name': 'Lukas', 'customer_id': Decimal('1')}],
     'Count': 2}


class DecimalEncoder(json.JSONEncoder):
    def _iterencode(self, o, markers=None):
        if isinstance(o, Decimal):
            # wanted a simple yield str(o) in the next line,
            # but that would mean a yield on the line with super(...),
            # which wouldn't work (see my comment below), so...
            return (str(o) for o in [o])
        return super(DecimalEncoder, self)._iterencode(o, markers)


print(json.dumps(thang, cls=DecimalEncoder))

And here the linter shows that line return super(DecimalEncoder, self)._iterencode(o, markers) has errors, because Super of 'DecimalEncoder' has no '_iterencode' member and when ran throws TypeError: Object of type 'Decimal' is not JSON serializable

How do I make this work?

Answer 1

That answer turned out to be outdated and there was another answer with the working solution:

class DecimalEncoder(json.JSONEncoder):
    def default(self, o):
        if isinstance(o, decimal.Decimal):
            return str(o)
        return super(DecimalEncoder, self).default(o)

Note that this will convert the decimal to its string representation (eg; "1.2300" ) to a. not lose significant digits and b. prevent rounding errors.

Answer 2

I wanted to serialize Decimal to JSON, and also deserialize it back to actual Decimal class objects in a dictionary elsewhere.

Here is my sample program which works for me (Python 3.6):

import json
from decimal import Decimal
import decimal

class DecimalEncoder(json.JSONEncoder):
    def default(self, obj):
        if isinstance(obj, decimal.Decimal):
            return {'__Decimal__': str(obj)}
        # Let the base class default method raise the TypeError
        return json.JSONEncoder.default(self, obj)

def as_Decimal(dct):
    if '__Decimal__' in dct:
        return decimal.Decimal(dct['__Decimal__'])
    return dct


sample_dict = {
        "sample1": Decimal("100"), 
        "sample2": [ Decimal("2.0"), Decimal("2.1") ],
        "sample3": Decimal("3.1415"),
        "other": "hello!"
    }
print("1. sample_dict is:\n{0}\n".format(sample_dict))

sample_dict_encoded_as_json_string = json.dumps(sample_dict, cls=DecimalEncoder)
print("2. sample_dict_encoded_as_json_string is:\n{0}\n".format(sample_dict_encoded_as_json_string))

sample_dict_recreated = json.loads(sample_dict_encoded_as_json_string, object_hook=as_Decimal)
print("3. sample_dict_recreated is:\n{0}\n".format(sample_dict_recreated))

And here is the output:

1. sample_dict is:
{'sample1': Decimal('100'), 'sample2': [Decimal('2.0'), Decimal('2.1')], 'sample3': Decimal('3.1415'), 'other': 'hello!'}

2. sample_dict_encoded_as_json_string is:
{"sample1": {"__Decimal__": "100"}, "sample2": [{"__Decimal__": "2.0"}, {"__Decimal__": "2.1"}], "sample3": {"__Decimal__": "3.1415"}, "other": "hello!"}

3. sample_dict_recreated is:
{'sample1': Decimal('100'), 'sample2': [Decimal('2.0'), Decimal('2.1')], 'sample3': Decimal('3.1415'), 'other': 'hello!'}

Hope this helps!