How to print integers as hex strings using json.dumps() in Python

Question

Currently I am using the following code to print a large data structure

print(json.dumps(data, indent=4))

I would like to see all the integ

Answer 1

A possible approach is to have a serialize function, which produces a copy of your dictionary on the fly and uses the standard json module to dump the string. A preliminary implementation looks like:

import json

def serialize(data):
    _data = {}
    for k, v in data.items():
        if isinstance(v, int):
            _data[k] = hex(v)
        else:
            _data[k] = v
    return json.dumps(_data, indent=4)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    data = {"a":1, "b":2.0, "c":3}
    print serialize(data)

output:

{
    "a": "0x1", 
    "c": "0x3", 
    "b": 2.0
}

Notice that this preliminary implementation does not work with lists, but this is easily changed.

Some may claim that the approach is memory-intensive because it creates a copy of the original data. This may be the case, but if your data structure is that big, then maybe you should (a) not be using JSON, or (b) create a copy of the JSON module in your working directory and tailor it to your needs.

Cheers.