How to store a dictionary in a Django database model's field

I just discovered the django-jsonfield package, which

is a reusable Django field that allows you to store validated JSON in your model.

Looks like a viable option to achieve what you want.

One convenient way to store a JSON representation in a model is to use a custom field type:

class JSONField(models.TextField):
    """
    JSONField is a generic textfield that neatly serializes/unserializes
    JSON objects seamlessly.
    Django snippet #1478

    example:
        class Page(models.Model):
            data = JSONField(blank=True, null=True)


        page = Page.objects.get(pk=5)
        page.data = {'title': 'test', 'type': 3}
        page.save()
    """

    __metaclass__ = models.SubfieldBase

    def to_python(self, value):
        if value == "":
            return None

        try:
            if isinstance(value, basestring):
                return json.loads(value)
        except ValueError:
            pass
        return value

    def get_db_prep_save(self, value, *args, **kwargs):
        if value == "":
            return None
        if isinstance(value, dict):
            value = json.dumps(value, cls=DjangoJSONEncoder)
        return super(JSONField, self).get_db_prep_save(value, *args, **kwargs)

I saved this utils/fields.py and in my model from utils.fields import JSONField. There are many more goodies in the django-annoying app, which is where this snippet came from.

Using a custom field type is my preferred solution - I'd rather have a few lines of custom code than support an entire 3rd party library for a single field type. Tony Abou-Assaleh has a great solution, but won't work for newer versions of Django.

This is verified to work with Django 1.10.4

import json

from django.db import models
from django.core.serializers.json import DjangoJSONEncoder


class JSONField(models.TextField):
    """
    JSONField is a generic textfield that neatly serializes/unserializes
    JSON objects seamlessly.
    Django snippet #1478

    example:
        class Page(models.Model):
            data = JSONField(blank=True, null=True)


        page = Page.objects.get(pk=5)
        page.data = {'title': 'test', 'type': 3}
        page.save()
    """

    def to_python(self, value):
        if value == "":
            return None

        try:
            if isinstance(value, str):
                return json.loads(value)
        except ValueError:
            pass
        return value

    def from_db_value(self, value, *args):
        return self.to_python(value)

    def get_db_prep_save(self, value, *args, **kwargs):
        if value == "":
            return None
        if isinstance(value, dict):
            value = json.dumps(value, cls=DjangoJSONEncoder)
        return value