json serialize a dictionary with tuples as key

Question

Is there a way in Python to serialize a dictionary that is using a tuple as key:

a={(1,2):\'a\'}

simply using json.dumps(a), produces:

Answer 1

json can only accept strings as keys for dict, what you can do, is to replace the tuple keys with string like so

with open("file", "w") as f:
    k = dic.keys() 
    v = dic.values() 
    k1 = [str(i) for i in k]
    json.dump(json.dumps(dict(zip(*[k1,v]))),f) 

And than when you want to read it, you can change the keys back to tuples using

with open("file", r) as f:
    data = json.load(f)
    dic = json.loads(data)
    k = dic.keys() 
    v = dic.values() 
    k1 = [eval(i) for i in k] 
    return dict(zip(*[k1,v]))