How to parse a nested json ajax object in Django views? - ajax

Question

I need to make a request as follows:
var url="http://127.0.0.1:8080/simulate/";
$.ajax({
url: url,
type: 'POST',
data:{ student_num:10,
company_num:10,
students:"",
csrfmiddlewaretoken:'{{csrf_token}}',
companies:[{weight:10},{weight:11},{weight:9}]
},
success: function(data, textStatus, xhr) {
var text=xhr.responseText
console.log(text)
}
});
But in this way, the request.POST object is not organizing the companies into a nested json array. Instead it makes it into a 2D array as follows:
<QueryDict: {u'student_num': [u'10'], u'students': [u''], u'companies[2][weight]': [u'9'], u'companies[1][weight]': [u'11'], u'company_num': [u'10'], u'companies[0][weight]': [u'10'], u'csrfmiddlewaretoken': [u'RpLfyEnZaU2o4ExxCVSJkTJ2ws6WoPrs']}>
In this way, I feel hard to reorganize the companies into a list of objects. I checked some other questions, some people say we should do this:
companies:"[{weight:10},{weight:11},{weight:9}]"
And then use json.loads to parse the string back to a list of objects. But I am keep getting parsing error if I use codes like this:
company_array = request.POST['company_array']
company_array = json.loads(company_array)
or this:
company_array = json.load(StringIO(company_array))
So what should be the correct way to handle nested JSON object?

Answer 1

You should use JSON.stringify() to stringify your data before sending it:
$.ajax({
url: url,
type: 'POST',
data: { data: JSON.stringify({ student_num:10,
company_num:10,
students:"",
csrfmiddlewaretoken:'{{csrf_token}}',
companies:[{weight:10},{weight:11},{weight:9}]
}) },
success: function(data, textStatus, xhr) {
var text=xhr.responseText
console.log(text)
}
});
Then you can parse with json.loads() on the server side:
data = json.loads(request.POST.get('data'))

Answer 2

You might find the answers here useful: Reading multidimensional arrays from a POST request in Django

Answer 3

You can try look to django-SplitJSONWidget-form and get decision from it.