How do I return JSON without using a template in Django?

Question

This is related to this question: Django return json and html depending on client python

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I have a command line Python API for a Django app. When I access the a

Answer 1

I think the issue has gotten confused regarding what you want. I imagine you're not actually trying to put the HTML in the JSON response, but rather want to alternatively return either HTML or JSON.

First, you need to understand the core difference between the two. HTML is a presentational format. It deals more with how to display data than the data itself. JSON is the opposite. It's pure data -- basically a JavaScript representation of some Python (in this case) dataset you have. It serves as merely an interchange layer, allowing you to move data from one area of your app (the view) to another area of your app (your JavaScript) which normally don't have access to each other.

With that in mind, you don't "render" JSON, and there's no templates involved. You merely convert whatever data is in play (most likely pretty much what you're passing as the context to your template) to JSON. Which can be done via either Django's JSON library (simplejson), if it's freeform data, or its serialization framework, if it's a queryset.

simplejson

from django.utils import simplejson

some_data_to_dump = {
   'some_var_1': 'foo',
   'some_var_2': 'bar',
}

data = simplejson.dumps(some_data_to_dump)

Serialization

from django.core import serializers

foos = Foo.objects.all()

data = serializers.serialize('json', foos)

Either way, you then pass that data into the response:

return HttpResponse(data, content_type='application/json')

[Edit] In Django 1.6 and earlier, the code to return response was

return HttpResponse(data, mimetype='application/json')

[EDIT]: simplejson was remove from django, you can use:

import json

json.dumps({"foo": "bar"})

Or you can use the django.core.serializers as described above.

Answer 2

For rendering my models in JSON in django 1.9 I had to do the following in my views.py:

from django.core import serializers
from django.http import HttpResponse
from .models import Mymodel

def index(request):
    objs = Mymodel.objects.all()
    jsondata = serializers.serialize('json', objs)
    return HttpResponse(jsondata, content_type='application/json')

Answer 3

from django.utils import simplejson 
from django.core import serializers 

def pagina_json(request): 
   misdatos = misdatos.objects.all()
   data = serializers.serialize('json', misdatos) 
   return HttpResponse(data, mimetype='application/json')

Answer 4

Here's an example I needed for conditionally rendering json or html depending on the Request's Accept header

# myapp/views.py
from django.core import serializers                                                                                
from django.http import HttpResponse                                                                                  
from django.shortcuts import render                                                                                   
from .models import Event

def event_index(request):                                                                                             
    event_list = Event.objects.all()                                                                                  
    if request.META['HTTP_ACCEPT'] == 'application/json':                                                             
        response = serializers.serialize('json', event_list)                                                          
        return HttpResponse(response, content_type='application/json')                                                
    else:                                                                                                             
        context = {'event_list': event_list}                                                                          
        return render(request, 'polls/event_list.html', context)

you can test this with curl or httpie

$ http localhost:8000/event/
$ http localhost:8000/event/ Accept:application/json

note I opted not to use JsonReponse as that would reserialize the model unnecessarily.

Answer 5

In the case of the JSON response there is no template to be rendered. Templates are for generating HTML responses. The JSON is the HTTP response.

However, you can have HTML that is rendered from a template withing your JSON response.

html = render_to_string("some.html", some_dictionary)
serialized_data = simplejson.dumps({"html": html})
return HttpResponse(serialized_data, mimetype="application/json")

Answer 6

If you want to pass the result as a rendered template you have to load and render a template, pass the result of rendering it to the json.This could look like that:

from django.template import loader, RequestContext

#render the template
t=loader.get_template('sample/sample.html')
context=RequestContext()
html=t.render(context)

#create the json
result={'html_result':html)
json = simplejson.dumps(result)

return HttpResponse(json)

That way you can pass a rendered template as json to your client. This can be useful if you want to completely replace ie. a containing lots of different elements.