CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonstring
aschmid00
aschmid00

Reputation: 7158

Escape double quotes for JSON in Python

How can I replace double quotes with a backslash and double quotes in Python? 

>>> s = 'my string with "double quotes" blablabla'
>>> s.replace('"', '\\"')
'my string with \\"double quotes\\" blablabla'
>>> s.replace('"', '\\\"')
'my string with \\"double quotes\\" blablabla'

I would like to get the following:

'my string with \"double quotes\" blablabla'

Upvotes: 76

Views: 190787

Answers (4)

Medhat Gayed
Medhat Gayed

Reputation: 2813

Note that you can escape a json array / dictionary by doing json.dumps twice and json.loads twice:

>>> a = {'x': 1}
>>> b = json.dumps(json.dumps(a))
>>> b
'"{\\"x\\": 1}"'
>>> json.loads(json.loads(b))
{u'x': 1}

Upvotes: 68

Tam Nguyen
Tam Nguyen

Reputation: 108

i know this question is old, but hopefully it will help someone. i found a great plugin for those who are using PyCharm IDE: string-manipulation that can easily escape double quotes (and many more...), this plugin is great for cases where you know what the string going to be. for other cases, using json.dumps(string) will be the recommended solution

str_to_escape = 'my string with "double quotes" blablabla'

after_escape = 'my string with \"double quotes\" blablabla'

Upvotes: 1

Zach Kelling
Zach Kelling

Reputation: 53819

You should be using the json module. json.dumps(string). It can also serialize other python data types.

import json

>>> s = 'my string with "double quotes" blablabla'

>>> json.dumps(s)
<<< '"my string with \\"double quotes\\" blablabla"'

Upvotes: 144

Andrew
Andrew

Reputation: 2568

>>> s = 'my string with \\"double quotes\\" blablabla'
>>> s
'my string with \\"double quotes\\" blablabla'
>>> print s
my string with \"double quotes\" blablabla
>>>

When you just ask for 's' it escapes the \ for you, when you print it, you see the string a more 'raw' state. So now...

>>> s = """my string with "double quotes" blablabla"""
'my string with "double quotes" blablabla'
>>> print s.replace('"', '\\"')
my string with \"double quotes\" blablabla
>>>

Upvotes: 24

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