[change:radius] Replace third-party JSONField with Django built-in JSONField

[Eeshu-Yadav]

Checklist

• I have read the OpenWISP Contributing Guidelines.
• I have manually tested the changes proposed in this pull request.
• I have written new test cases for new code and/or updated existing tests for changes to existing code.
• I have updated the documentation.

Reference to Existing Issue

Closes #600.

Description of Changes

This PR replaces the third-party jsonfield library with Django's built-in JSONField. The third-party JSONField library hasn't received updates in 5 years, while Django's built-in JSONField is now mature and actively maintained.

Changes Made:

• Replaced from jsonfield import JSONField with from django.db.models import JSONField in models
• Updated RadiusBatch.user_credentials and OrganizationRadiusSettings.sms_meta_data fields
• Removed "jsonfield~=3.1.0" dependency from setup.py
• Added migration 0041_replace_jsonfield_with_django_builtin.py to handle field type transition
• Updated test migrations to use Django's JSONField

Testing:

• All existing tests pass with the new implementation
• Verified RadiusBatch and SMS metadata functionality
• Migration tested without data loss

[Eeshu-Yadav]

@nemesifier kindly review

[coveralls]

coverage: 88.285% (-3.7%) from 91.995%
when pulling cdd7769 on Eeshu-Yadav:issues/600-replace-jsonfield-clean
into 33bbd55 on openwisp:master.

[nemesifier]

Thanks @Eeshu-Yadav, see my comments below.

[Eeshu-Yadav]

@nemesifier kindly review

[coderabbitai]

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

Replaces third-party jsonfield.JSONField with Django's built-in models.JSONField across models, tests, and migrations; adds DjangoJSONEncoder to JSONField declarations; removes jsonfield from setup.py. Updates imports in openwisp_radius/base/models.py and changes AbstractRadiusBatch.prefix_add to assign Python objects (not JSON strings) into user_credentials. Adds schema migrations to alter JSONField metadata and a data migration that iterates RadiusBatch records, converts double-encoded JSON strings in user_credentials into proper JSON objects, and saves the normalized values.

Sequence Diagram(s)

sequenceDiagram
    participant Migration as Migration (RunPython)
    participant ORM as ORM (apps.get_model)
    participant DB as Database
    participant JSON as json.loads

    Migration->>ORM: get RadiusBatch model
    Migration->>DB: query RadiusBatch objects (exclude null user_credentials)
    DB-->>Migration: iterator of RadiusBatch rows
    loop per RadiusBatch
        Migration->>Migration: read instance.user_credentials
        alt value is string
            Migration->>JSON: json.loads(string)
            JSON-->>Migration: python_obj
            Migration->>DB: save instance with user_credentials=python_obj (update_fields)
            DB-->>Migration: acknowledge save
        else value already object
            Migration-->>Migration: skip
        end
    end

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Estimated code review effort

🎯 3 (Moderate) | ⏱️ ~20 minutes

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly and concisely describes the main change: replacing third-party JSONField with Django's built-in JSONField, which matches the primary objective of the PR.
Description check	✅ Passed	The PR description covers all key aspects: rationale for change, specific modifications made, testing verification, and checklist completion status (4 of 4 items addressed).
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	The PR fully addresses issue #600 objectives: replaced third-party jsonfield with Django's JSONField, ensured data migration without loss via migrations, and updated all relevant imports and dependencies.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	All changes are directly scoped to the JSONField replacement objective: model field updates, migrations, dependency removal, and test migration updates with no extraneous modifications.
Merge Conflict Detection	✅ Passed	✅ No merge conflicts detected when merging into master

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[coderabbitai]

Actionable comments posted: 1

🤖 Fix all issues with AI agents

In `@openwisp_radius/migrations/0044_convert_user_credentials_data.py`:
- Around line 8-17: The migration's DB operations must be routed to the
migration database: obtain db_alias = schema_editor.connection.alias inside
convert_user_credentials_data and use it when querying and saving RadiusBatch
(e.g., use RadiusBatch.objects.using(db_alias).exclude(...).iterator() and call
batch.save(update_fields=["user_credentials"], using=db_alias)) so reads/writes
go to the correct database during migrations.

📜 Review details

Configuration used: Organization UI

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 43361fd and 1c67f5d.

📒 Files selected for processing (5)

• openwisp_radius/base/models.py
• openwisp_radius/migrations/0043_alter_organizationradiussettings_sms_meta_data_and_more.py
• openwisp_radius/migrations/0044_convert_user_credentials_data.py
• setup.py
• tests/openwisp2/sample_radius/migrations/0002_initial_openwisp_app.py

💤 Files with no reviewable changes (1)

• setup.py

🧰 Additional context used

🧬 Code graph analysis (1)

openwisp_radius/migrations/0043_alter_organizationradiussettings_sms_meta_data_and_more.py (1)

openwisp_radius/migrations/0044_convert_user_credentials_data.py (1)

• Migration (20-33)

🪛 Ruff (0.14.14)

openwisp_radius/migrations/0044_convert_user_credentials_data.py

[warning] 8-8: Unused function argument: schema_editor

(ARG001)

---

[warning] 22-27: Mutable class attributes should be annotated with typing.ClassVar

(RUF012)

---

[warning] 29-33: Mutable class attributes should be annotated with typing.ClassVar

(RUF012)

openwisp_radius/migrations/0043_alter_organizationradiussettings_sms_meta_data_and_more.py

[warning] 8-10: Mutable class attributes should be annotated with typing.ClassVar

(RUF012)

---

[warning] 12-31: Mutable class attributes should be annotated with typing.ClassVar

(RUF012)

⏰ Context from checks skipped due to timeout of 90000ms. You can increase the timeout in your CodeRabbit configuration to a maximum of 15 minutes (900000ms). (13)

• GitHub Check: CodeQL analysis (python)
• GitHub Check: Agent
• GitHub Check: Python==3.12 | django~=5.2.0
• GitHub Check: Python==3.13 | django~=5.2.0
• GitHub Check: Python==3.12 | django~=5.1.0
• GitHub Check: Python==3.10 | django~=4.2.0
• GitHub Check: Python==3.10 | django~=5.1.0
• GitHub Check: Python==3.11 | django~=5.1.0
• GitHub Check: Python==3.10 | django~=5.2.0
• GitHub Check: Python==3.13 | django~=5.1.0
• GitHub Check: Python==3.11 | django~=5.2.0
• GitHub Check: Python==3.11 | django~=4.2.0
• GitHub Check: Python==3.12 | django~=4.2.0

🔇 Additional comments (4)

openwisp_radius/base/models.py (2)

20-20: Import adjustment looks fine.

Line 20 change is consistent with the rest of the file.

---

1017-1023: prefix_add update looks consistent.

Line 1022 assignment aligns with the surrounding logic in prefix_add.

openwisp_radius/migrations/0043_alter_organizationradiussettings_sms_meta_data_and_more.py (1)

13-30: Migration update looks good.

The field alterations are straightforward and consistent.

tests/openwisp2/sample_radius/migrations/0002_initial_openwisp_app.py (1)

544-553: Sample migration updates look good.

These updates are consistent with the rest of the migration.

Also applies to: 696-698

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[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This pull request migrates from the unmaintained third-party jsonfield library to Django's built-in JSONField. The third-party library hasn't been updated in 5 years, while Django's JSONField is actively maintained and natively supported across all databases used by the project.

Changes:

• Replaced third-party JSONField with Django's built-in models.JSONField in model definitions
• Removed jsonfield~=3.1.0 dependency from setup.py
• Added migrations to handle the field type transition and data conversion

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 5 out of 5 changed files in this pull request and generated 1 comment.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
setup.py	Removed the deprecated jsonfield dependency
openwisp_radius/base/models.py	Updated imports to use Django's JSONField and removed manual json.dumps() call that was causing double-encoding
openwisp_radius/migrations/0043_alter_organizationradiussettings_sms_meta_data_and_more.py	AlterField migration to change field types from third-party JSONField to Django's JSONField
openwisp_radius/migrations/0044_convert_user_credentials_data.py	Data migration to convert double-encoded JSON strings to proper Python objects
tests/openwisp2/sample_radius/migrations/0002_initial_openwisp_app.py	Updated test migrations to use Django's JSONField

---

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[Copilot]

The migration should add error handling for edge cases where user_credentials might be an empty string or invalid JSON. Currently, if user_credentials is an empty string, json.loads will raise a JSONDecodeError and fail the migration. Consider adding a try-except block to handle this gracefully, or add an additional check to skip empty strings before attempting to parse.

Suggested change

	batch.user_credentials = json.loads(batch.user_credentials)
	# Skip empty or whitespace-only strings which would fail json.loads
	if not batch.user_credentials.strip():
	continue
	# Safely attempt to decode JSON; skip records with invalid JSON
	try:
	decoded_credentials = json.loads(batch.user_credentials)
	except json.JSONDecodeError:
	continue
	batch.user_credentials = decoded_credentials

[Eeshu-Yadav]

@nemesifier previously requested that this migration "fail loudly" on invalid data rather than silently skip errors, to ensure data integrity issues are caught and investigated rather than hidden. If empty strings or invalid JSON turn out to be common during testing, we can address them explicitly with proper handling.

[nemesifier]

Ok but this is not the right way of doing this, we should:

try/except and if the exception is reached: call log.exception() and print an error message with the exception message, eg:

print("Encountered error while processing {batch}: {e}")

[Eeshu-Yadav]

@nemesifier kindly review

[nemesifier]

Ok but this is not the right way of doing this, we should:

try/except and if the exception is reached: call log.exception() and print an error message with the exception message, eg:

print("Encountered error while processing {batch}: {e}")