python: serialize a dictionary into a simple html output

Question

using app engine - yes i know all about django templates and other template engines.

Lets say i have a dictionary or a simple object, i dont know its structure and i

Answer 1

I needed something similar, but also wanted to pretty print lists, and lists inside the dict. Here's what I came up:

def format(self, obj, indent = 1):
    if isinstance(obj, list):
        htmls = []
        for k in obj:
            htmls.append(self.format(k,indent+1))

        return '[
%s
]' % (indent, ',
'.join(htmls))

    if isinstance(obj, dict):
        htmls = []
        for k,v in obj.iteritems():
            htmls.append("%s: %s" % (k,self.format(v,indent+1)))

        return '{
%s
}' % (indent, ',
'.join(htmls))

    return str(obj)

Then, if you're using webapp on appengine, you can just do the following:

self.response.out.write(self.format(obj))

This is an example of the output: