Feature or enhancement

Proposal:

Currently, the standard library json module does not natively serialize decimal.Decimal instances as JSON numbers. Users must either:

• Provide a custom default function
• Subclass JSONEncoder
• Or convert Decimal values manually before serialization

This proposal suggests adding an optional parameter (defaulting to False) that allows automatic conversion of Decimal instances to JSON numbers.

This way:

• Decimal is part of the Python standard library.
• JSON supports arbitrary precision numbers conceptually.
• Many web frameworks already provide similar functionality.
• This avoids repetitive custom encoder boilerplate.
• The default remains safe and backward compatible.

Current behaviour:

json.dumps({"price": Decimal("10.23")})
TypeError: Object of type Decimal is not JSON serializable
when serializing dict item 'price'

Desired behaviour:

json.dumps({"price": Decimal("10.23")}, decimal_as_number=True)
{"price": 19.99}

Has this already been discussed elsewhere?

This is a minor feature, which does not need previous discussion elsewhere

Links to previous discussion of this feature:

No response