python - How to overcome "datetime.datetime not JSON serializable"?

Question

I have a basic dict as follows:

sample = {}
sample['title'] = "String"
sample['somedate'] = somedatetimehere

When I try to do jsonify(sample) I get:

TypeError: datetime.datetime(2012, 8, 8, 21, 46, 24, 862000) is not JSON serializable

What can I do such that my dictionary sample can overcome the error above?

Note: Though it may not be relevant, the dictionaries are generated from the retrieval of records out of mongodb where when I print out str(sample['somedate']), the output is 2012-08-08 21:46:24.862000.

Answer 1

My quick & dirty JSON dump that eats dates and everything:

json.dumps(my_dictionary, indent=4, sort_keys=True, default=str)

default is a function applied to objects that aren't serializable.
In this case it's str, so it just converts everything it doesn't know to strings. Which is great for serialization but not so great when deserializing (hence the "quick & dirty") as anything might have been string-ified without warning, e.g. a function or numpy array.