CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonjsonreddit
shadyabhi
shadyabhi

Reputation: 17234

Problem decoding json strings using json module

After contacting a server I get the following strings as response

{"kind": "t2", "data": {"has_mail": null, "name": "shadyabhi", "created": 1273919273.0, "created_utc": 1273919273.0, "link_karma": 1343, "comment_karma": 301, "is_gold": false, "is_mod": false, "id": "425zf", "has_mod_mail": null}}

which is stored as type 'str' in my script.

Now, when I try to decode it using json.dumps(mystring, sort_keys=True, indent=4), I get this.

"{\"kind\": \"t2\", \"data\": {\"has_mail\": null, \"name\": \"shadyabhi\", \"created\": 1273919273.0, \"created_utc\": 1273919273.0, \"link_karma\": 1343, \"comment_karma\": 301, \"is_gold\": false, \"is_mod\": false, \"id\": \"425zf\", \"has_mod_mail\": null}}"

which should really be like this

shadyabhi@archlinux ~ $ echo '{"kind": "t2", "data": {"has_mail": "null", "name": "shadyabhi", "created": 1273919273.0, "created_utc": 1273919273.0, "link_karma": 1343, "comment_karma": 299, "is_gold": "false", "is_mod": "false", "id": "425zf", "has_mod_mail": "null"}}' | python2 -mjson.tool
{
    "data": {
        "comment_karma": 299, 
        "created": 1273919273.0, 
        "created_utc": 1273919273.0, 
        "has_mail": "null", 
        "has_mod_mail": "null", 
        "id": "425zf", 
        "is_gold": "false", 
        "is_mod": "false", 
        "link_karma": 1343, 
        "name": "shadyabhi"
    }, 
    "kind": "t2"
}
shadyabhi@archlinux ~ $

So, what is it that's going wrong?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 160

Answers (4)

Aaron Dufour
Aaron Dufour

Reputation: 17515

You want json.loads. The dumps method is for going the other way (dumping an object to a json string).

Upvotes: 1

Remi
Remi

Reputation: 21175

You are supposed to dump an object (like a dictionary) which then becomes a string, not the other way round... see here.

Use json.loads() instead.

Upvotes: 1

Duncan
Duncan

Reputation: 95682

You have things backwards. If you want to convert a string to a data structure you need to use json.loads(thestring). json.dumps() is for converting a data structure to a json encoded string.

Upvotes: 1

g.d.d.c
g.d.d.c

Reputation: 47988

You need to load it before you can dump it. Try this:

data = json.loads(returnFromWebService)

json.dumps(data, sort_keys=True, indent=4)

To add a bit more detail - you're receiving a string, and then asking the json library to dump it to a string. That doesn't make a great deal of sense. What you need to do first is put the data into a more meaningful container. By calling loads you take the string value of the return and parse it into an actual Python Dictionary. Then, you can pass that data to dumps which outputs a string using your requested formatting.

Upvotes: 2

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