How do you serialize a model instance in Django?

You can easily use a list to wrap the required object and that's all what django serializers need to correctly serialize it, eg.:

from django.core import serializers# assuming obj is a model instanceserialized_obj = serializers.serialize('json', [ obj, ])

If you're dealing with a list of model instances the best you can do is using serializers.serialize(), it gonna fit your need perfectly.

However, you are to face an issue with trying to serialize a single object, not a list of objects. That way, in order to get rid of different hacks, just use Django's model_to_dict (if I'm not mistaken, serializers.serialize() relies on it, too):

from django.forms.models import model_to_dict# assuming obj is your model instancedict_obj = model_to_dict( obj )

You now just need one straight json.dumps call to serialize it to json:

import jsonserialized = json.dumps(dict_obj)

That's it! :)

To avoid the array wrapper, remove it before you return the response:

import jsonfrom django.core import serializersdef getObject(request, id):    obj = MyModel.objects.get(pk=id)    data = serializers.serialize('json', [obj,])    struct = json.loads(data)    data = json.dumps(struct[0])    return HttpResponse(data, mimetype='application/json')

I found this interesting post on the subject too:

http://timsaylor.com/convert-django-model-instances-to-dictionaries

It uses django.forms.models.model_to_dict, which looks like the perfect tool for the job.