Get request body as string in Django

Question

I\'m sending a POST request with JSON body to a Django server (fairly standard). On the server I need to decode this using json.loads().

The problem is

Answer 1

The request body, request.body, is a byte string. In Python 3, json.loads() will only accept a unicode string, so you must decode request.body before passing it to json.loads().

body_unicode = request.body.decode('utf-8')
body_data = json.loads(body_unicode)

In Python 2, json.loads will accept a unicode string or a byte sting, so the decode step is not necessary.

When decoding the string, I think you're safe to assume 'utf-8' - I can't find a definitive source for this, but see the quote below from the jQuery docs:

Note: The W3C XMLHttpRequest specification dictates that the charset is always UTF-8; specifying another charset will not force the browser to change the encoding.

In Python 3.6, json.loads() accepts bytes or bytearrays. Therefore you shouldn't need to decode request.body (assuming it's encoded in UTF-8).