title: Confused by Python returning JSON as string instead of literal
body: <p>I've done some coding in RoR, and in Rails, when I return a JSON object via an API call, it returns as </p>
  
  <p><code>{ "id" : "1", "name" : "Dan" }</code>. </p>
  
  <p>However in Python (with Flask and Flask-SQLAlchemy), when I return a JSON object via json.dumps or jsonpickle.encode it is returned as </p>
  
  <p><code>"{ \"id\" : \"1\", \"name\": \"Dan\" }"</code> which seems very unwieldily as it can't easily be parsed on the other end (by an iOS app in this case - Obj-C).</p>
  
  <p>What am I missing here, and what should I do to return it as a JSON literal, rather than a JSON string?</p>
  
  <p>This is what my code looks like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>people = models.UserRelationships.query.filter_by(user_id=user_id, active=ACTIVE_RECORD)
  friends = people.filter_by(friends=YES)
  
  json_object = jsonpickle.encode(friends.first().as_dict(), unpicklable=False, keys=True)
  print(json_object)  # this prints here, i.e. { "id" : "1", "name" : "Dan" }
  
  return json_object # this returns "{ \"id\" : \"1\", \"name\": \"Dan\" }" to the browser
  </code></pre>