CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonjsonpython-3.8
David Gard
David Gard

Reputation: 12047

Load string into dictionary when some values contain single quotes

I have a string that I need to load into a dictionary. I'm trying to use json.loads() to do this, but it is failing because I need to replace single quotes with double quotes because by default the strings use single quotes to wrap property names and values, although in some cases the value is wrapped in double quotes because it contains an single quote.

Here is a reproduceable example using Python3.8

>>> import json
>>> example = "{'msg': \"I'm a string\"}"
>>> json.loads(example.replace("'", '"'))
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.8/json/__init__.py", line 357, in loads
    return _default_decoder.decode(s)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.8/json/decoder.py", line 337, in decode
    obj, end = self.raw_decode(s, idx=_w(s, 0).end())
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.8/json/decoder.py", line 353, in raw_decode
    obj, end = self.scan_once(s, idx)
json.decoder.JSONDecodeError: Expecting ',' delimiter: line 1 column 12 (char 11)

Is there a better way to load a string into a dictionary? The json module seems to only work with double quotes and as that is not possible here (I have no control over the formatting of the strings), hence why I'm having to use the unreliable replace.

My desired result is to have a dictionary like this.

{'msg': "I'm a string"}

Upvotes: 2

Views: 2689

Answers (1)

pho
pho

Reputation: 25489

Use ast.literal_eval()Docs:

>>> import ast
>>> ast.literal_eval(example)

 {'msg': "I'm a string"}

Upvotes: 3

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