Encoding nested python object in JSON

my previous sample, with another nested object and your advices :

import json

class Identity:
    def __init__(self):
        self.name="abc name"
        self.first="abc first"
        self.addr=Addr()
    def reprJSON(self):
        return dict(name=self.name, firstname=self.first, address=self.addr) 

class Addr:
    def __init__(self):
        self.street="sesame street"
        self.zip="13000"
    def reprJSON(self):
        return dict(street=self.street, zip=self.zip) 

class Doc:
    def __init__(self):
        self.identity=Identity()
        self.data="all data"
    def reprJSON(self):
        return dict(id=self.identity, data=self.data) 

class ComplexEncoder(json.JSONEncoder):
    def default(self, obj):
        if hasattr(obj,'reprJSON'):
            return obj.reprJSON()
        else:
            return json.JSONEncoder.default(self, obj)

doc=Doc()
print "Str representation"
print doc.reprJSON()
print "Full JSON"
print json.dumps(doc.reprJSON(), cls=ComplexEncoder)
print "Partial JSON"
print json.dumps(doc.identity.addr.reprJSON(), cls=ComplexEncoder)

produces the expected result :

Str representation
{'data': 'all data', 'id': <__main__.Identity instance at 0x1005317e8>}
Full JSON
{"data": "all data", "id": {"name": "abc name", "firstname": "abc first", "address": {"street": "sesame street", "zip": "13000"}}}
Partial JSON
{"street": "sesame street", "zip": "13000"}

Thanks.

So, the immediate problem is that you're passing the json module a JSON value, which will get encoded as just another string in the JSON value.

The broader problem is that you're greatly overcomplicating this.

Drawing on JSON datetime between Python and JavaScript, I'd go with something closer to this:

import json

class Abc:
    def __init__(self):
        self.name="abc name"
    def jsonable(self):
        return self.name

class Doc:
    def __init__(self):
        self.abc=Abc()
    def jsonable(self):
        return self.__dict__

def ComplexHandler(Obj):
    if hasattr(Obj, 'jsonable'):
        return Obj.jsonable()
    else:
        raise TypeError, 'Object of type %s with value of %s is not JSON serializable' % (type(Obj), repr(Obj))

doc=Doc()
print json.dumps(doc, default=ComplexHandler)

which gets you:

~$ python nestjson.py 
{"abc": "abc name"}
~$ 

This can be made cleaner/saner/safer (in particular, just grabbing __dict__ isn't generally a recommended thing to do outside debugging/troubleshooting), but it should get the point across. All you need, fundamentally, is a way to get a json-compatible object (whether that's a simple string or number, or a list or dict) out of each "node" in the tree. That object should not be an already-JSON-serialized object, which is what you were doing.

To avoid repetition of code like in Fred Laurent's answer I overloaded the __iter__() method as follows. This also permits to 'jsonize' list elements, datetime and decimal with no extra dependencies, just use dict().

import datetime
import decimal


class Jsonable(object):
    def __iter__(self):
        for attr, value in self.__dict__.iteritems():
            if isinstance(value, datetime.datetime):
                iso = value.isoformat()
                yield attr, iso
            elif isinstance(value, decimal.Decimal):
                yield attr, str(value)
            elif(hasattr(value, '__iter__')):
                if(hasattr(value, 'pop')):
                    a = []
                    for subval in value:
                        if(hasattr(subval, '__iter__')):
                            a.append(dict(subval))
                        else:
                            a.append(subval)
                    yield attr, a
                else:
                    yield attr, dict(value)
            else:
                yield attr, value

class Identity(Jsonable):
    def __init__(self):
        self.name="abc name"
        self.first="abc first"
        self.addr=Addr()

class Addr(Jsonable):
    def __init__(self):
        self.street="sesame street"
        self.zip="13000"

class Doc(Jsonable):
    def __init__(self):
        self.identity=Identity()
        self.data="all data"


def main():
    doc=Doc()
    print "-Dictionary- \n"
    print dict(doc)
    print "\n-JSON- \n"
    print json.dumps(dict(doc), sort_keys=True, indent=4)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

The output:

-Dictionary- 

{'data': 'all data', 'identity': {'first': 'abc first', 'addr': {'street': 'sesame street', 'zip': '13000'}, 'name': 'abc name'}}

-JSON- 

{
    "data": "all data", 
    "identity": {
        "addr": {
            "street": "sesame street", 
            "zip": "13000"
        }, 
        "first": "abc first", 
        "name": "abc name"
    }
}

Hope it helps! Thanks