Provide dumps() method

[krismeister]

The current docs do not give an example of serialization support for JSON.

I attempted to use Marshmallow's dumps feature

db.MyModel.Schema.dumps(someInstanceOfMyModel)
# throws this error:
TypeError: dumps() missing 1 required positional argument: 'obj' marshmallow

But received an error. I am currently using someInstanceOfMyModel._raw to get the data for JSON output.

Feature Request
Add a expose a dumps method to get a dict.

db.MyModel.dumps(someInstanceOfMyModel)

[ricky-sb]

Add a expose a dumps method to get a dict.

If you only want a dict, you can use the to_dict() method.

Try this: someInstanceOfMyModel.to_dict().

[Quidge]

The obj value that's missing is the instance. You need to use an instantiated Schema:

db.MyModel.Schema().dumps(someInstanceOfMyModel)

I think that the interface of the dumped data from that will vary depending on whether you have marshmallow 2.x or 3.x installed. There was a breaking api change between the two. My project uses marshmallow 2.x so I'm used to doing this to get the dumped data:

data, errors = db.MyModel.Schema().dumps(someInstanceOfMyModel)
# data will the serialized object, errors will be any errors encountered during serialization