import json
array = '{"fruits": ["apple", "banana", "orange"]}'
data = json.loads(array)
That is my JSON array, but I would want to convert all the values in the 'fruits' string to a Python list. What would be the correct way of doing this?
4 Answers
import json
array = '{"fruits": ["apple", "banana", "orange"]}'
data = json.loads(array)
print(data['fruits'])
# the print displays:
# ['apple', 'banana', 'orange']
You had everything you needed. data will be a dict, and data['fruits'] will be a list
4 Comments
GoldBishop
problem is when the JSON format uses Single Quotes
' instead of double quotes "
jdi
How do you mean?
GoldBishop
I sent a double quote
" string with string qualifications using single quotes '....it could not parse the JSON with that sequence of quotations....converted to Single Quote with Double Quote qualifications and it did just fine....thought it was odd but may be a premise to parsejdi
But where was the json in these examples ever using single quotes? Json as a format does not support single quotes. Yes you are right as a fact but I don't know where you are pointing it out here
import json
array = '{"fruits": ["apple", "banana", "orange"]}'
data = json.loads(array)
fruits_list = data['fruits']
print fruits_list
Comments
ast.literal_eval() from the Python standard library ast may be used to parse json strings as well.
It's especially useful if the string looks like a json but is actually a string representation of a Python object. In such cases, json.loads won't work but ast.literal_eval works.
import ast
array = '{"fruits": ("apple", "banana", "orange")}'
a = ast.literal_eval(array) # {'fruits': ('apple', 'banana', 'orange')}
j = json.loads(array) # JSONDecodeError
Comments
data will return you a string representation of a list, but it is actually still a string. Just check the type of data with type(data). That means if you try using indexing on this string representation of a list as such data['fruits'][0], it will return you "[" as it is the first character of data['fruits']
You can do json.loads(data['fruits']) to convert it back to a Python list so that you can interact with regular list indexing. There are 2 other ways you can convert it back to a Python list suggested here
data['fruits']will be a listlist. A JSON Object is homologous to a Pythondict. Technically, you have adictcontaining a single key-value pair where the value is alistof strings.