© 2019 MathByte Academy

Custom Encodings

As we saw in the previous video, any object can be serialized to JSON

cumbersome à remember to call the JSON serializer for every class

how do we do it for nested dictionaries and lists?

dump dumps

à can provide custom callable

à uses a default instance of JSONEncoder

à we can completely override JSONEncoder

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Specifying a Custom Encoding Function

One of the arguments of the dump / dumps function is default

à when provided, Python will call default if it encounters a type it cannot serialize
à argument must be a callable

à callable must have a single argument

à that argument will receive the object Python cannot serialize
à can include logic in our callable to differentiate between different types

à or we can use a single dispatch generic function

[ using the @singledispatch decorator from the functools module]

© 2019 MathByte Academy

Coding

© 2019 MathByte Academy