How to Parse Data From JSON Into Python

JSON stands for JavaScript Object Notation and it is the most common and widely used data structure format to exchange data, between server and client. From rest APIs to NoSQL databases JSON is used everywhere. And luckily python comes with an inbuilt module json where Python parses JSON data . Here in this Python tutorial we will explore the Python json module and learn How can Python parse JSON and write Python code to parse JSON to Dictionary .

What is JSON?

JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is a data structure format that is derived from the JavaScript Programming language. The data representation of JSON looks similar to the python dictionary . And JSON format is used to send data from a server to a web-page.

JSON Example

 {
    "username": "Sam",
    "age": 35,
    "cart": ["shoes", "tshirt", "iphone"],
    "orders": [
        {
            "year": 2019,
            "total orders": 30,
            "spent": 6000
        },
        {
            "year": 2020,
            "total orders": 43,
            "spent":7000
        }
    ]
}

The above example is the data representation of JSON, and here you can see that the structure of JSON is similar to the Python dictionary. And it also supports string, number, list, and nested objects.

Python Serialization and Deserialization

As we know that JSON is the common data format for sending and receiving data between server and client. So, if we want to send data to a rest API or server using Python, we first need to encode our data to JSON format. And encoding of Python data to JSON data is known as Serialization in python. And if we want to decode JSON data to the python data, then we deserialize it, and that process is known as Deserialization or Python parse JSON. And in Deserialization the Python Parse JSON to dictionary data structure, because both JSON and Python dictionary has similar structure format.

< Note >: serialization and deserialization are the processes for type conversion between Python to JSON and JSON to Python dictionary.

Serialization type conversion

During serialization, we convert the Python data object to the corresponding JSON or JavaScript data type

Deserialization Type Conversion

In Deserialization we parse JSON data value to corresponding Python data object or types

Python JSON module

Python comes with an inbuilt module called json which can serialize and deserialize python object to JSON data and JSON data to python object respectively. The python json module makes it easy for the developer to deal with the JSON data.

import python JSON module

To use json module in a python program we first need to import it using the python import keyword import json

Python Parse JSON (deserialization)

There are two json methods json.loads() and json.load() to parse JSON string and JSON file in Python.

Parse JSON string in Python

Most of the time we receive JSON object in string format, so using the python json.loads() method we can convert string Python JSON to dict.

Example

import json

user_json_data ='''{
    "username": "Sam",
    "age": 35,
    "cart": ["shoes", "tshirt", "iphone"],
    "orders": [
        {
            "year": 2019, "total orders": 30,  "spent": 6000
        },
        { "year": 2020, "total orders": 43 ,"spent":7000
        }
    ]
}
'''

user_python_dict = json.loads(user_json_data )
print(user_python_dict)

print(user_python_dict["orders"])

Output

{'username': 'Sam', 'age': 35, 'cart': ['shoes', 'tshirt', 'iphone'], 'orders': [{'year': 2019, 'total orders': 30, 'spent': 6000}, {'year': 2020, 'total orders': 43, 'spent': 7000}]}

[{'year': 2019, 'total orders': 30, 'spent': 6000}, {'year': 2020, 'total orders': 43, 'spent': 7000}]

Behind the code

In the above example, you can see that we converted the user_json_data JSON string to a Python dictionary object user_python_dict. Here if we used the python dict() method instead of json.loads() we would receive an error.

Parse JSON file in Python

First, using the Python file handling technique Python load JSON file, then using json.load() method Python parses the JSON data.

#user.json

{
    "username": "Sam",
    "age": 35,
    "cart": ["shoes", "tshirt", "iphone"],
    "orders": [
        {
            "year": 2019,
            "total orders": 30,
            "spent": 6000
        },
        {
            "year": 2020,
            "total orders": 43,
            "spent":7000
        }
    ]
}

#python

import json
with open ("user.json", 'r') as f:
    user_python_dict = json.load(f)

print(user_python_dict)
print(user_python_dict["orders"])

Output

{'username': 'Sam', 'age': 35, 'cart': ['shoes', 'tshirt', 'iphone'], 'orders': [{'year': 2019, 'total orders': 30, 'spent': 6000}, {'year': 2020, 'total orders': 43, 'spent': 7000}]}
[{'year': 2019, 'total orders': 30, 'spent': 6000}, {'year': 2020, 'total orders': 43, 'spent': 7000}]

Note: For JSON string we use json.loads() method to parse the JSON data And for JSON file we use the json.load() method.

Python convert to JSON string (serialization)

To convert a Python dictionary object to JSON string we use the Python json.dumps() method. As the python dictionary is very similar to the JSON object so the json.dumps() method accepts a Python dictionary object.

Example convert python dictionary to JSON

import json
user_dict = {"name":"Rahul", "age":23, "adult": True}
json_string = json.dumps(user_dict)
print(json_string)

Output

{"name": "Rahul", "age": 23, "adult": true}

Create a JSON file and write JSON data Python

With the help of Python file handing, we can create a JSON file and using the json.dump() method we can write JSON data in that JSON file.

Example

import json
user_dict = {"name":"Rahul", "age":23, "adult": True}
with open("user_data.json", "w") as json_file:
    json.dump(user_dict, json_file)

The above program will create a user_data.json file and write the JSON data in that file.

Prettify the JSON data:

For a large data set the JSON data could be clustered and hard to read, but with the help of indent and sort_keys parameters, we can prettify the data and make it more readable.

Example

import json
user_dict = {"user1":{"name":"Rahul", "age":23, "adult": True},"user2":{"name":"Ram", "age":20, "adult": True}}
print(json.dumps(user_dict, indent = 4, sort_keys=True))

Output

{
    "user1": {
        "adult": true,
        "age": 23,
        "name": "Rahul"
    },

    "user2": {
        "adult": true,
        "age": 20,
        "name": "Ram"
    }
}

Conclusion

In this Python tutorial, we learned how can we use the Python json module to parse JSON in Python. The python json.loads(python_json_string) method parses the json string, whereas json.load(json_file) parse the json file. Similarly, the json.dumps(python_dict) method converts the python object to the corresponding json string and json.dump() method can write in the json file.

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