Numbers as dictionary keys possible with simplejson?

[Anton I. Sipos]

I'm trying to serialize the following data structure, that uses
integers as keys to a dictionary. In the result, the keys show up as
strings:

>>> simplejson.dumps({1:'foo', 2:'bar'})
'{"1": "foo", "2": "bar"}'

Which is the same result of this dictionary:

>>> simplejson.dumps({"1":'foo', "2":'bar'})
'{"1": "foo", "2": "bar"}'

Is there a way to get simplejson to serialize the keys as numbers? I'm
using simplejson 2.1.1.

Thanks.

[Bob Ippolito]

This is not possible because it is not permitted in the JSON spec.