JSON serialization of Google App Engine models

In the latest (1.5.2) release of the App Engine SDK, a to_dict() function that converts model instances to dictionaries was introduced in db.py. See the release notes.

There is no reference to this function in the documentation as of yet, but I have tried it myself and it works as expected.

A simple recursive function can be used to convert an entity (and any referents) to a nested dictionary that can be passed to simplejson:

import datetime
import time

SIMPLE_TYPES = (int, long, float, bool, dict, basestring, list)

def to_dict(model):
    output = {}

    for key, prop in model.properties().iteritems():
        value = getattr(model, key)

        if value is None or isinstance(value, SIMPLE_TYPES):
            output[key] = value
        elif isinstance(value, datetime.date):
            # Convert date/datetime to MILLISECONDS-since-epoch (JS "new Date()").
            ms = time.mktime(value.utctimetuple()) * 1000
            ms += getattr(value, 'microseconds', 0) / 1000
            output[key] = int(ms)
        elif isinstance(value, db.GeoPt):
            output[key] = {'lat': value.lat, 'lon': value.lon}
        elif isinstance(value, db.Model):
            output[key] = to_dict(value)
        else:
            raise ValueError('cannot encode ' + repr(prop))

    return output

This is the simplest solution I found. It requires only 3 lines of codes.

Simply add a method to your model to return a dictionary:

class DictModel(db.Model):
    def to_dict(self):
       return dict([(p, unicode(getattr(self, p))) for p in self.properties()])

SimpleJSON now works properly:

class Photo(DictModel):
   filename = db.StringProperty()
   title = db.StringProperty()
   description = db.StringProperty(multiline=True)
   date_taken = db.DateTimeProperty()
   date_uploaded = db.DateTimeProperty(auto_now_add=True)
   album = db.ReferenceProperty(Album, collection_name='photo')

from django.utils import simplejson
from google.appengine.ext import webapp

class PhotoHandler(webapp.RequestHandler):
   def get(self):
      photos = Photo.all()
      self.response.out.write(simplejson.dumps([p.to_dict() for p in photos]))