BadRequest can't return JSON?

I am trying to return a JSON object along with a 400 error code. This correctly returns the object (e.g. {"email": ["A user with that email address already exists."]}:

return HttpResponse(json.dumps(dict(form.errors.items())))

Whereas these all just returns an unreadable (by javascript) object ([object Object]):

return BadRequest(json.dumps(dict(form.errors.items())))
return HttpResponseBadRequest(json.dumps(dict(form.errors.items())))
return BadRequest(json.dumps(dict(form.errors.items())), content_type='application/json')

I've tried several other methods of sending an error code but the results were the same. How do I get the readable object along with a 400 Bad Request error code?

Probably the easiest way is a JsonResponse [Django-doc] with status=400:

def my_view(request):
    # …
    return JsonResponse(dict(form.errors.items()), status=400)

this also omits serializing manually.

Back to Top