how to create highcharts formatted json structure with python

Question

I am trying to create some json that will render a highchart graph with python/django.

here is what my view looks like so far:

class LineHighChart(object):
    title = {}

def weight_graph(request):
    print 'weight graph'
    highchart = LineHighChart()
    title = {
        'title': {
            'text': 'Weight Chart',
            'x': -20
        }
    }

    highchart.title = title
    print highchart

    return JsonResponse(highchart, safe=False)

This prints:

<shared.linehighchart.LineHighChart object at 0x1038a6890>

I then get the error:

TypeError: <shared.linehighchart.LineHighChart object at 0x1038a6890> is not JSON serializable

From the highcharts example, this needs to be embedded in a highcharts object like this:

highcharts({
        title: {
            text: 'Monthly Average Temperature',
            x: -20 //center
        },

How do I make my highcharts object look like the highcharts example?

score 4 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 10:26

You are trying serializer object of class to json, but python doesn't know how do this correctly.There are several approaches to solving this problem: create your own object encoder, converting data into a dictionary, etc...(more).

After serialization your data will be:

'{"title": {"title": {"text": "Weight Chart", "x": -20}}}'

But this is incorrect format and highcharts will not understand it. So I propose simplified you logic like this:

def weight_graph(request):
    title = {
        'title': {
            'text': 'Weight Chart',
            'x': -20
        }
    }

    return JsonResponse(title, safe=False)

Or if you really need use class:

class LineHighChart(object):
    title = {}


def weight_graph():
    highchart = LineHighChart()
    title = {
        'text': 'Weight Chart',
        'x': -20
    }
    highchart.title = title

    return JsonResponse(highchart.__dict__, safe=False)

After serialization data will be:

'{"title": {"text": "Weight Chart", "x": -20}}'

Highcharts works fine with this data.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 23 '15 at 15:29

0

If you want to use highcharts in python, you should check out python-highcharts, a python module which does exactly this for you.

Sufficient documentation is added to get you started. (pip install, ipython notebook)

answered Jun 23 '15 at 15:29

mvdc7070

23
3

how to create highcharts formatted json structure with python

2 Answers2