How to overcome “datetime.datetime not JSON serializable” in python?

For others who do not need or want to use the pymongo library for this.. you can achieve datetime JSON conversion easily with this small snippet:

def default(obj):
    """Default JSON serializer."""
    import calendar, datetime

    if isinstance(obj, datetime.datetime):
        if obj.utcoffset() is not None:
            obj = obj - obj.utcoffset()
    millis = int(
        calendar.timegm(obj.timetuple()) * 1000 +
        obj.microsecond / 1000
    )
    return millis

Then use it like so:

import datetime, json
print json.dumps(datetime.datetime.now(), default=default)

output: '1365091796124'

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11875770/how-to-overcome-datetime-datetime-not-json-serializable-in-python