Is JSON library part of python by default or is it external package. Is simplejson a different package than Json

Question

Well, 2 straight forward questions. I am trying to use json with django. I tried to use shell and do import json No errors here. But when I try to use json_dumps() or just dumps() I am getting

NameError: name 'json_dumps' is not defined

Apparently my json import din't work despite having no error.

Also, a few bonus questions I had during this are:

1. simplejson and json are same or different packages.
2. Which one is native to python
3. which one is recommended under what scenarios.

Answer 1

Your error doesn't have anything to do with your question. This is a simple matter of Python namespacing: the function is json.dumps not json_dumps.

However, json has been a part of the standard library since 2.5. simplejson is a separate library. Unless you know you need it, you should use json.