python JSON datetime at last

content warning: geeky computer stuff

At work I have a common flow of Python code querying MySQL and dumping results into JSON. This works great except our tables tend to have columns for create and modify dates. And Python's json library won't convert datetime types to string, so dumping the result of "SELECT * FROM" errors. And I've had bits of ad hoc code to remote datetime values, then a little function for it, but it was still a pain. Especially today, when for stupid VPC reasons I'm writing a simple generic SQL service.

In annoyance I tried searching again and found, buried in the middle of a stackoverflow with answers about subclassing and shit:

json.dumps(thing, default=str)

Bam, done. The function passed to 'default' gets invoked on anything that errors at first. And in Python 'str' works on pretty much anything.

If I cared about the exact format I could write a function that inspected type and converted dates (or just assume datetime is the only cause of errors so just invoke a method when triggered), but str is fine for now.

Soooo simple. Thanks, python, and stackoverflow person who gave the simplest answer.