Serializing a Python namedtuple to json

Question

What is the recommended way of serializing a namedtuple to json with the field names retained?

Serializing a namedtuple to json results in only the valu

Answer 1

There is a more convenient solution is to use the decorator (it uses the protected field _fields).

Python 2.7+:

import json
from collections import namedtuple, OrderedDict

def json_serializable(cls):
    def as_dict(self):
        yield OrderedDict(
            (name, value) for name, value in zip(
                self._fields,
                iter(super(cls, self).__iter__())))
    cls.__iter__ = as_dict
    return cls

#Usage:

C = json_serializable(namedtuple('C', 'a b c'))
print json.dumps(C('abc', True, 3.14))

# or

@json_serializable
class D(namedtuple('D', 'a b c')):
    pass

print json.dumps(D('abc', True, 3.14))

Python 3.6.6+:

import json
from typing import TupleName

def json_serializable(cls):
    def as_dict(self):
        yield {name: value for name, value in zip(
            self._fields,
            iter(super(cls, self).__iter__()))}
    cls.__iter__ = as_dict
    return cls

# Usage:

@json_serializable
class C(NamedTuple):
    a: str
    b: bool
    c: float

print(json.dumps(C('abc', True, 3.14))

Answer 2

I wrote a library for doing this: https://github.com/ltworf/typedload

It can go from and to named-tuple and back.

It supports quite complicated nested structures, with lists, sets, enums, unions, default values. It should cover most common cases.

edit: The library also supports dataclass and attr classes.

Answer 3

simplejson.dump() instead of json.dump does the job. It may be slower though.

Answer 4

It looks like you used to be able to subclass simplejson.JSONEncoder to make this work, but with the latest simplejson code, that is no longer the case: you have to actually modify the project code. I see no reason why simplejson should not support namedtuples, so I forked the project, added namedtuple support, and I'm currently waiting for my branch to be pulled back into the main project. If you need the fixes now, just pull from my fork.

EDIT: Looks like the latest versions of simplejson now natively support this with the namedtuple_as_object option, which defaults to True.

Answer 5

The jsonplus library provides a serializer for NamedTuple instances. Use its compatibility mode to output simple objects if needed, but prefer the default as it is helpful for decoding back.

Answer 6

It recursively converts the namedTuple data to json.

print(m1)
## Message(id=2, agent=Agent(id=1, first_name='asd', last_name='asd', mail='2@mai.com'), customer=Customer(id=1, first_name='asd', last_name='asd', mail='2@mai.com', phone_number=123123), type='image', content='text', media_url='h.com', la=123123, ls=4512313)

def reqursive_to_json(obj):
    _json = {}

    if isinstance(obj, tuple):
        datas = obj._asdict()
        for data in datas:
            if isinstance(datas[data], tuple):
                _json[data] = (reqursive_to_json(datas[data]))
            else:
                 print(datas[data])
                _json[data] = (datas[data])
    return _json

data = reqursive_to_json(m1)
print(data)
{'agent': {'first_name': 'asd',
'last_name': 'asd',
'mail': '2@mai.com',
'id': 1},
'content': 'text',
'customer': {'first_name': 'asd',
'last_name': 'asd',
'mail': '2@mai.com',
'phone_number': 123123,
'id': 1},
'id': 2,
'la': 123123,
'ls': 4512313,
'media_url': 'h.com',
'type': 'image'}