json.dumps vs flask.jsonify

The jsonify() function in flask returns a flask.Response() object that already has the appropriate content-type header 'application/json' for use with json responses. Whereas, the json.dumps() method will just return an encoded string, which would require manually adding the MIME type header.

See more about the jsonify() function here for full reference.

Edit: Also, I've noticed that jsonify() handles kwargs or dictionaries, while json.dumps() additionally supports lists and others.

You can do:

flask.jsonify(**data)

or

flask.jsonify(id=str(album.id), title=album.title)

This is flask.jsonify()

def jsonify(*args, **kwargs):
    if __debug__:
        _assert_have_json()
    return current_app.response_class(json.dumps(dict(*args, **kwargs),
        indent=None if request.is_xhr else 2), mimetype='application/json')

The json module used is either simplejson or json in that order. current_app is a reference to the Flask() object i.e. your application. response_class() is a reference to the Response() class.

The choice of one or another depends on what you intend to do. From what I do understand:

• jsonify would be useful when you are building an API someone would query and expect json in return. E.g: The REST github API could use this method to answer your request.

• dumps, is more about formating data/python object into json and work on it inside your application. For instance, I need to pass an object to my representation layer where some javascript will display graph. You'll feed javascript with the Json generated by dumps.