django-jsonview 2.0.0

Content Types

If you need to return a content type other than the standard application/json, you can specify that in the decorator with the content_type argument, for example:

from jsonview.decorators import json_view

@json_view(content_type='application/vnd.github+json')
def myview(request):
    return {'foo': 'bar'}

The response will have the appropriate content type header.

Return Values

The default case is to serialize your return value and respond with HTTP 200 and a Content-Type of application/json.

The @json_view decorator will handle many exceptions and other cases, including:

• Http404

• PermissionDenied

• HttpResponseNotAllowed (e.g. require_GET, require_POST)

• jsonview.exceptions.BadRequest (see below)

• Any other exception (logged to django.request).

Any of these exceptions will return the correct status code (i.e., 404, 403, 405, 400, 500) a Content-Type of application/json, and a response body that looks like:

json.dumps({
    'error': STATUS_CODE,
    'message': str(exception),
})

BadRequest

HTTP does not have a great status code for “you submitted a form that didn’t validate,” and so Django doesn’t support it very well. Most examples just return 200 OK.

Normally, this is fine. But if you’re submitting a form via Ajax, it’s nice to have a distinct status for “OK” and “Nope.” The HTTP 400 Bad Request response is the fallback for issues with a request not-otherwise-specified, so let’s do that.

To cause @json_view to return a 400, just raise a jsonview.exceptions.BadRequest with whatever appropriate error message.

Exceptions

If your view raises an exception, @json_view will catch the exception, log it to the normal django.request logger, and return a JSON response with a status of 500 and a body that looks like the exceptions in the Return Values section.

Status Codes

If you need to return a different HTTP status code, just return two values instead of one. The first is your serializable object, the second is the integer status code:

@json_view
def myview(request):
    if not request.user.is_subscribed():
        # Send a 402 Payment Required status.
        return {'subscribed': False}, 402
    # Send a 200 OK.
    return {'subscribed': True}

Extra Headers

You can add custom headers to the response by returning a tuple of three values: an object, a status code, and a dictionary of headers.

@json_view
def myview(request):
    return {}, 200, {'X-Server': 'myserver'}

Custom header values may be overwritten by response middleware.

Raw Return Values

To make it possible to cache JSON responses as strings (and because they aren’t JSON serializable anyway) if you return an HttpResponse object (or subclass) it will be passed through unchanged, e.g.:

from django import http
from jsonview.decorators import JSON

@json_view
def caching_view(request):
    kached = cache.get('cache-key')
    if kached:
        return http.HttpResponse(kached, content_type=JSON)
    # Assuming something else populates this cache.
    return {'complicated': 'object'}

Configuring JSON Output

Additional keyword arguments can be passed to json.dumps() via the JSON_OPTIONS = {} Django setting. For example, to pretty-print JSON output:

JSON_OPTIONS = {
    'indent': 4,
}

Or to compactify it:

JSON_OPTIONS = {
    'separators': (',', ':'),
}

jsonview uses DjangoJSONEncoder by default. To use a different JSON encoder, use the cls option:

JSON_OPTIONS = {
    'cls': 'path.to.MyJSONEncoder',
}

JSON_OPTIONS['cls'] may be a dotted string or a JSONEncoder class.

If you are using a JSON module that does not support the ``cls`` kwarg, such as ujson, set the cls option to None:

JSON_OPTIONS = {
    'cls': None,
}

Default value of content-type is ‘application/json’. You can change it via the JSON_DEFAULT_CONTENT_TYPE Django settings. For example, to add charset:

JSON_DEFAULT_CONTENT_TYPE = 'application/json; charset=utf-8'

Running Tests

To run the tests, you probably want to create a virtualenv, then install Django and Mock with pip:

pip install Django==${DJANGO_VERSION} mock==1.0.1

Then run the tests with:

./run.sh test