passing JSON from ASIHTTPRequest to django - objective-c

Question

I've exhausted other threads, so I'm posting this question here. Please pardon any newbie mistakes I've made along the way. I've been reading a lot, and I think I'm getting confused.
The Goal:
I'm trying to pass data from a form in objective-c to my django web service. In an effort to assist with this, I've employed the ASIHTTPRequest class to facilitate information transfer. Once sent to the web service, I'd like to save that data to my sqlite3 database.
Procedure:
On the Objective-C side:
I've stored the inputted form data and their respective keys in an NSDictionary, like this:
NSDictionary *personInfo = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:firstName.text, #"fName", middleName.text, #"mName", lastName.text, #"lName", nil];
I've added it to my ASIHTTPRequest in a different class by using a delegate. I've made the NSDictionary the same as above in the code block below for simplicity, like so:
NSString *jsonPerson = [personInfo JSONRepresentation];
[request addRequestHeader: #"Content-Type" value:#"application/json; charset=utf-8"];
[request appendPostData:[jsonPerson dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
[request setRequestMethod:#"POST"];
[request startAsynchronous];
And a NSLog shows the string I'm passing to look like this, which validates at least in JSONLint
{"mName":"Arthur","lName":"Smith","fName":"Bob"}
Because I'm seeing what appears to be valid JSON coming from my ASIHTTPRequest, and actions are running from requestfinished: rather than requestfailed:, I'm making the assumption that the problem more than likely isn't on the Objective-C side, but rather on the django side.
Here's what I've tried so far:
json.loads(request.POST)
>>expected string or buffer
json.loads('request.POST')
>>no JSON object to decode
json.loads(request.raw_post_data)
>>mNamelNamefName
incoming = request.POST
>>{"mName":"Arthur","lName":"Smith","fName":"Bob"}
incoming = request.POST
onlyValues = incoming.iterlists()
>>(u'{"mName":"Arthur","lName":"Smith","fName":"Bob"}', [u''])
...and a smattering of other seemingly far-fetched variations. I've kept a log, and can elaborate. The only hope I've been able to find is in the last example; it looks like it's treating the entire string as the key, rather than breaking up each dict object and key as I would have expected.
I realize this is terribly elementary and I don't normally ask, but this problem has me particularly stumped. I do also remember reading somewhere that python won't recognize the double-quotes around each object and key, that to get it to something django likes, each should be surrounded by single-quotes. I just don't have any idea how to get them that way.
Thanks!

Answer 1

This might be a little cumbersome but you may try some simple regexp in objective c just to see if that is really the case
NSError *error = NULL;
NSRegularExpression *regex = [NSRegularExpression regularExpressionWithPattern:#"\"" options:NSRegularExpressionCaseInsensitive error:&error];
NSString *json = [regex stringByReplacingMatchesInString:jsonPerson options:0 range:NSMakeRange(0, [jsonPerson length]) withTemplate:#"'"];
There might be some errors because I didn't run the code.