From a13cdbeb255baf0a9caa4187e5693df920199ea8 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: David Fischer <djfische@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2016 07:08:07 -0700
Subject: [PATCH] Optionally sort JSON output

---
 docs/api-guide/settings.md  | 10 ++++++++++
 rest_framework/renderers.py |  9 ++++++---
 rest_framework/settings.py  |  1 +
 3 files changed, 17 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/docs/api-guide/settings.md b/docs/api-guide/settings.md
index f218d00ad..9514dd2d4 100644
--- a/docs/api-guide/settings.md
+++ b/docs/api-guide/settings.md
@@ -340,6 +340,16 @@ The default style is to return minified responses, in line with [Heroku's API de
 
 Default: `True`
 
+#### SORTED_JSON
+
+When set to `True`, keys in JSON responses will be sorted. For example:
+
+    {"email": "jane@example", "is_admin": false, "username": "jane"}
+
+When set to `False`, the JSON responses are arbitrarily ordered.
+
+Default: `False`
+
 #### COERCE_DECIMAL_TO_STRING
 
 When returning decimal objects in API representations that do not support a native decimal type, it is normally best to return the value as a string. This avoids the loss of precision that occurs with binary floating point implementations.
diff --git a/rest_framework/renderers.py b/rest_framework/renderers.py
index 7ca680e74..d977da389 100644
--- a/rest_framework/renderers.py
+++ b/rest_framework/renderers.py
@@ -97,9 +97,12 @@ class JSONRenderer(BaseRenderer):
             separators = INDENT_SEPARATORS
 
         ret = json.dumps(
-            data, cls=self.encoder_class,
-            indent=indent, ensure_ascii=self.ensure_ascii,
-            separators=separators
+            data,
+            cls=self.encoder_class,
+            indent=indent,
+            ensure_ascii=self.ensure_ascii,
+            separators=separators,
+            sort_keys=api_settings.SORTED_JSON,
         )
 
         # On python 2.x json.dumps() returns bytestrings if ensure_ascii=True,
diff --git a/rest_framework/settings.py b/rest_framework/settings.py
index 946b905c6..a80aee2cc 100644
--- a/rest_framework/settings.py
+++ b/rest_framework/settings.py
@@ -111,6 +111,7 @@ DEFAULTS = {
     # Encoding
     'UNICODE_JSON': True,
     'COMPACT_JSON': True,
+    'SORTED_JSON': False,
     'COERCE_DECIMAL_TO_STRING': True,
     'UPLOADED_FILES_USE_URL': True,
 }