DjangoJSONEncoder sublcass that is (sort of) able to serialize Django objects.

gistfile1.py

class JSONEncoder(DjangoJSONEncoder):
    """ Expands DjangoJsonEncoder to handle Django objects """
    def _obj_to_dict(self, o):
        """ Convert a Django object to plain dict

                   !!! HACK ALERT !!!

        """

        # Get objects's dict. This gives us most fields, but some fields
        # that reference other objects must be processed further later on.
        data = o.__dict__

        # Delete the Modelstate
        del data['_state']

        keys = data.keys()

        # Look for any keys that end with _cache and also have a counterpart
        # that end with _id, without the leading underscore.
        for key in keys:
            if key.endswith('_cache'):
                base_key = key.replace('_cache', '')[1:]

                # Do we have a match?
                if '%s_id' % base_key in data:
                    # Serialize the related object as well
                    data[base_key] = self._obj_to_dict(data[key])
                    
                    # Remove original keys
                    del data[key]
                    del data['%s_id' % base_key]

        # Return resulting dict for serialization
        return data


    def default(self, o):
        if isinstance(o, Model):
            return self._obj_to_dict(o)

        elif isinstance(o, QuerySet):
            return [self._obj_to_dict(obj) for obj in o]

        else:
            return super(JSONEncoder, self).default(o)