JSON Support

the SDK supports converting most dataclasses and BaseLists of dataclasses to JSON. This is done using the serialized() method. These methods convert the dataclass or BaseList to a dictionary or list of dictionaries. There is also the dump_json method, which is essentially the SDK's version of json.dumps. The reason for these methods is to provide a consistent way to convert dataclasses and BaseLists to JSON, as the standard json module often conflicts with some of the data types used in the SDK, mainly those from the datetime and ipaddress modules.

Method	Description
<dataclass>.serialized	Converts a dataclass to a JSON-serializable dictionary. Optional parameters are indent and exclude.
<BaseList>.serialized	Converts a BaseList to a JSON-serializable list of dictionaries. Optional parameters are indent and exclude.
<dataclass or BaseList>.dump_json	Converts a dataclass or BaseList to a JSON string. Optional parameters are indent and exclude.

Dataclass Mutations

You can also control how dataclasses are parsed when built from an API response using the qualysdk.DONT_EXPAND singleton object. This is useful for controlling how the SDK parses certain dataclass attributes. Normally, the SDK will try to either create dataclass objects for any objects an API endpoint returns under a key or expand certain sub-keys to new attributes on the dataclass. For example, in the WAS module, ownership data for a WebApp is received from the API like:

...
"owner": {
    "id": 123456,
    "username": "admin",
    "firstName": "Jane",
    "lastName": "Doe"
},
...

Normally, the SDK would create new attributes, prefixing them with owner_, and set them to the values of the keys in the owner object. So, the above example would be parsed as:

WebApp(
    owner_id=123456,
    owner_username="admin",
    owner_firstName="Jane",
    owner_lastName="Doe"
)

However, by using:

from qualysdk import DONT_EXPAND
DONT_EXPAND.flag = True

The SDK will not flatten the owner object, instead leaving it as it was received from the API. So, the above example would be parsed as:

WebApp(
    owner={
        "id": 123456,
        "username": "admin",
        "firstName": "Jane",
        "lastName": "Doe"
    }
)

In SQL Server, this would look like:

SELECT 
    JSON_VALUE(owner, '$.id') AS id,
    JSON_VALUE(owner, '$.firstName') AS firstName
FROM 
    MY_WAS_JSON_TABLE

id	firstName
123456	Jane

This is mainly used for JSON exports, either to a file with json.dump or to a SQL database with qualysdk.sql.upload_json. By default, DONT_EXPAND is set to False, so the SDK will always try to expand dataclass attributes. This is done to make it easier to work with the SDK, as it is often easier to work with flat dataclasses than nested ones. However, if you want to keep the structure as close to the API response as possible, you can set DONT_EXPAND to True.