JSON encoding and decoding with Python

Introduction
JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is frequently used between a server and a web application. An example of JSON data:

{ "persons": [ { "city": "Seattle", "name": "Brian" }, { "city": "Amsterdam", "name": "David" } ] }

The json module enables you to convert between JSON and Python Objects.

JSON conversion examples

Convert JSON to Python Object (Dict)
To convert JSON to a Python dict use this:

import json   json_data = '{"name": "Brian", "city": "Seattle"}' python_obj = json.loads(json_data) print python_obj["name"] print python_obj["city"]

Convert JSON to Python Object (List)
JSON data can be directly mapped to a Python list.

import json   array = '{"drinks": ["coffee", "tea", "water"]}' data = json.loads(array)   for element in data['drinks']: print element

Convert JSON to Python Object (float)
Floating points can be mapped using the decimal library.

import json from decimal import Decimal   jsondata = '{"number": 1.573937639}'   x = json.loads(jsondata, parse_float=Decimal) print x['number']

Convert JSON to Python Object (Example)
JSON data often holds multiple objects, an example of how to use that below:

import json   json_input = '{"persons": [{"name": "Brian", "city": "Seattle"}, {"name": "David", "city": "Amsterdam"} ] }'   try: decoded = json.loads(json_input)   # Access data for x in decoded['persons']: print x['name']   except (ValueError, KeyError, TypeError): print "JSON format error"

Convert Python Object (Dict) to JSON
If you want to convert a Python Object to JSON use the json.dumps() method.

import json from decimal import Decimal   d = {} d["Name"] = "Luke" d["Country"] = "Canada"   print json.dumps(d, ensure_ascii=False) # result {"Country": "Canada", "Name": "Luke"}

Converting JSON data to Python objects 
JSON data can be converted (deserialized) to Pyhon objects using the json.loads()function.  A table of the mapping:

JSON	Python
object	dict
array	list
string	str
number (int)	int
number (real)	float
true	True
false	False
null	None

Pretty printing

If you want to display JSON data you can use the json.dumps() function.

import json   json_data = '{"name": "Brian", "city": "Seattle"}' python_obj = json.loads(json_data) print json.dumps(python_obj, sort_keys=True, indent=4)

More
Google Charts with JSON data

https://pythonspot.com/en/json-encoding-and-decoding-with-python/