Converting a dictionary to a string

Question

I am having trouble with converting a dictionary to a string in python. I am trying to extract the information from one of my variables but cannot seem to remove the square brackets surrounding the information

for line in str(object):
    if line.startswith ('['):
        new_object = object.replace('[', '')

Is there a way to remove the square brackets or do I have to find another way of taking the information out of the dictionary?

Edit:

in more detail what i am trying to do here is the following

import requests
city = 'dublin'
country = 'ireland'

info = requests.get('http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?q='+city +','+ country +'&mode=json')

weather = info.json()['weather']

fh = open('/home/Ricky92d3/city.txt', 'w')
fh.write(str(weather))
fh.close()
fl = open('/home/Ricky92d3/city.txt')
Object = fl.read()
fl.close()

for line in str(Object):
    if line.startswith ('['):
        new_Object = Object.replace('[', '')
    if line.startswith ('{'):
        new_Object = Object.replace('{u', '')

print new_Object

i hope this makes what i am trying to do a little more clear

Answer 1

The object returned by info.json() is a Python dictionary, so you can access its contents using normal Python syntax. I admit that it can get a little bit tricky, since JSON dictionaries often contain other dictionaries and lists, but it's generally not too hard to figure out what's what if you print the JSON object out in a nicely formatted way. The easiest way to do that is by using the dumps() function in the standard Python json module.

The code below retrieves the JSON data into a dict called data.
It then prints the 'description' string from the list in the 'weather' item of data.
It then saves all the data (not just the 'weather' item) as an ASCII-encoded JSON file.
It then reads the JSON data back in again to a new dict called newdata, and pretty-prints it. Finally, it prints the weather description again, to verify that we got back what we saw earlier. :)

import requests, json

#The base URL of the weather service
endpoint = 'http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather'

#Filename for saving JSON data to
fname = 'data.json'

city = 'dublin'
country = 'ireland'

params = {
    'q': '%s,%s' % (city, country), 
    'mode': 'json',
}

#Fetch the info
info = requests.get(endpoint, params=params)
data = info.json()
#print json.dumps(data, indent=4)

#Extract the value of 'description' from the list in 'weather'
print '\ndescription: %s\n' % data['weather'][0]['description']

#Save data
with open(fname, 'w') as f:
    json.dump(data, f, indent=4)

#Reload data
with open(fname, 'r') as f:
    newdata = json.load(f)

#Show all the data we just read in
print json.dumps(newdata, indent=4)

print '\ndescription: %s\n' % data['weather'][0]['description']

output

description: light intensity shower rain

{
    "clouds": {
        "all": 75
    }, 
    "name": "Dublin", 
    "visibility": 10000, 
    "sys": {
        "country": "IE", 
        "sunset": 1438374108, 
        "message": 0.0118, 
        "type": 1, 
        "id": 5237, 
        "sunrise": 1438317600
    }, 
    "weather": [
        {
            "description": "light intensity shower rain", 
            "main": "Rain", 
            "id": 520, 
            "icon": "09d"
        }
    ], 
    "coord": {
        "lat": 53.340000000000003, 
        "lon": -6.2699999999999996
    }, 
    "base": "stations", 
    "dt": 1438347600, 
    "main": {
        "pressure": 1014, 
        "humidity": 62, 
        "temp_max": 288.14999999999998, 
        "temp": 288.14999999999998, 
        "temp_min": 288.14999999999998
    }, 
    "id": 2964574, 
    "wind": {
        "speed": 8.1999999999999993, 
        "deg": 210
    }, 
    "cod": 200
}

description: light intensity shower rain

Answer 2

I'm not quite sure what you're trying to do here (without seeing your dictionary) but if you have a string like x = "[myString]" you can just do the following:

x = x.replace("[", "").replace("]", "")

If this isn't working, there is a high chance you're actually getting a list returned. Though if that was the case you should see an error like this:

>>> x = [1,2,3]
>>> x.replace("[", "")
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: 'list' object has no attribute 'replace'

Edit 1:

I think there's a misunderstanding of what you're getting back here. If you're just looking for a csv output file with the weather from your api try this:

import requests
import csv

city = 'dublin'
country = 'ireland'

info = requests.get('http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?q='+city +','+ country +'&mode=json')

weather = info.json()['weather']
weather_fieldnames = ["id", "main", "description", "icon"]

with open('city.txt', 'w') as f:
  csvwriter = csv.DictWriter(f, fieldnames=weather_fieldnames)
  for w in weather:
    csvwriter.writerow(w)

This works by looping through the list of items you're getting and using a csv.DictWriter to write it as a row in the csv file.

Bonus

Don't call your dictionary object - It's a reserved word for the core language.