Serializing Your Data

Once you’ve created and validated your data objects, you’ll often need to save them to files, send them over networks, or store them in databases. MD-Models makes it easy to convert your objects into common serialization formats that can be used anywhere.

Serialization is the process of converting your Python objects into a format that can be stored or transmitted, like JSON, XML, or a Python dictionary. MD-Models handles all the details of this conversion, ensuring that your data structure is preserved correctly in whatever format you choose.

Converting to JSON

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is one of the most common formats for exchanging data between systems. It’s human-readable, widely supported, and works well with web APIs, databases, and configuration files. MD-Models provides convenient methods to convert your objects to JSON:

# Convert to a JSON string
json_string = project.model_dump_json(indent=2)
print(json_string)

# Or convert to a Python dictionary (which can then be serialized to JSON)
data_dict = project.model_dump()

The indent=2 parameter makes the JSON nicely formatted with proper indentation, making it easy to read and debug. You can omit it if you want a more compact format for storage or transmission. The JSON output preserves your entire object structure, including all nested objects and collections.

Once you have JSON, you can easily save it to a file, send it over HTTP, store it in a database, or use it with any tool that understands JSON. MD-Models ensures that the JSON representation accurately reflects your data model structure.

Converting to XML

If you need XML format (perhaps for integration with legacy systems, SOAP APIs, or XML-based tools), MD-Models can generate that too:

# Convert to a formatted XML string
xml_string = project.xml()
print(xml_string)

# Or get raw XML bytes
xml_bytes = project.xml(encoding="bytes")

The XML output is automatically formatted with proper indentation and follows standard XML conventions. MD-Models handles the conversion of your object structure into XML elements and attributes, ensuring that the resulting XML is valid and well-formed. This makes it easy to integrate MD-Models data with systems that expect XML input.