Nearly got it working, just the foreign key field to do

years/2025/log_entries/readme.txt

@@ -5,3 +5,65 @@ there is an observed risk of overwriting each others' changes.
 
 After each expo finishes, the logbook will be permanantly stored in 
 the same HTML archive format we are currently using.
+
+PROBLEM
+Logbookentry has author as a foreign key defined on PersonLogbookEntry, 
+so it is not serializable in the Logbookentry object.
+
+
+Gemini has the answer:
+
+from django.http import JsonResponse, HttpResponse
+# from .models import LogbookEntry, PersonLogEntry, Person # Import your models
+from django.forms.models import model_to_dict
+from datetime import datetime
+import json
+from decimal import Decimal
+
+# Re-using the custom encoder from the previous suggestion for robust date/decimal handling
+class CustomJSONEncoder(json.JSONEncoder):
+    def default(self, obj):
+        if isinstance(obj, datetime):
+            return obj.isoformat()
+        if isinstance(obj, Decimal):
+            return str(obj)
+        return json.JSONEncoder.default(self, obj)
+
+def export_entry_with_author_details(request, entry_id):
+    try:
+        # 1. Get the LogbookEntry instance
+        entry = LogbookEntry.objects.get(pk=entry_id)
+        
+        # 2. Get the related PersonLogEntry and Person (Author)
+        # Use .select_related() for efficiency
+        author_link = PersonLogEntry.objects.select_related('person').get(
+            entry=entry, 
+            is_author=True # Adjust filter based on your logic
+        )
+        author = author_link.person
+
+    except (LogbookEntry.DoesNotExist, PersonLogEntry.DoesNotExist):
+        return HttpResponse(f'Entry or Author not found for ID {entry_id}', status=404)
+
+    # 3. Manually create the nested dictionary structure
+    # Use model_to_dict for easy extraction of the simple fields
+    
+    # Author data (specify fields you want to expose)
+    author_data = model_to_dict(author, fields=['id', 'first_name', 'last_name', 'email'])
+    
+    # Entry data (specify fields you want to expose)
+    entry_data = model_to_dict(entry, fields=['id', 'title', 'content', 'date_created'])
+
+    # Nest the author data inside the entry data
+    entry_data['author'] = author_data
+    
+    # Add data from the intermediate model if needed (e.g., the date the person was added)
+    entry_data['author_assignment_date'] = author_link.date_assigned.isoformat()
+
+
+    # 4. Return the custom dictionary using JsonResponse
+    return JsonResponse(
+        entry_data, 
+        encoder=CustomJSONEncoder,
+        safe=False # Set to True if entry_data was a list/QuerySet
+    )