Python json dumps throws error as "is not JSON serializable""

Question

I am trying to load a simple json which is,

[
  {
    "positions": [
      {
        "title": "a",
        "is-current": true,
        "company-name": "a"
      }
    ],
    "public-profile-url": "\/pub\/ademar-b\/20\/22b\/842",
    "location": "Irati Area, Brazil",
    "first-name": "Ademar",
    "num-connections": "4",
    "last-name": "B",
    "industry": "Government Administration"
  },
  {
    "positions": [
      {
        "title": "Messenger",
        "is-current": true,
        "company-name": "YAA Croup"
      },
      {
        "title": "Messenger",
        "is-current": true,
        "company-name": "YAA Croup"
      }
    ],
    "public-profile-url": "\/pub\/adememb-b\/41\/7a8\/171",
    "location": "Ethiopia",
    "first-name": "adememb",
    "num-connections": "0",
    "last-name": "B",
    "industry": "Wholesale"
  }
]

My task is to load the json, clean some entries and then dump it to file. But my following simple code is giving error:

    profiles=json.load(fin)
    json.dumps(outfile,profiles)

I am not able to understand as why this simple thing is not working, where I am just loading and dumping same json?

Martijn Pieters · Accepted Answer · 2014-11-08 21:17:54Z

5

You are using the wrong function; you are trying to turn the file object into a JSON string:

>>> json.dumps(open('/tmp/demo.json', 'w'))
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/Users/mj/Development/Library/buildout.python/parts/opt/lib/python2.7/json/__init__.py", line 243, in dumps
    return _default_encoder.encode(obj)
  File "/Users/mj/Development/Library/buildout.python/parts/opt/lib/python2.7/json/encoder.py", line 207, in encode
    chunks = self.iterencode(o, _one_shot=True)
  File "/Users/mj/Development/Library/buildout.python/parts/opt/lib/python2.7/json/encoder.py", line 270, in iterencode
    return _iterencode(o, 0)
  File "/Users/mj/Development/Library/buildout.python/parts/opt/lib/python2.7/json/encoder.py", line 184, in default
    raise TypeError(repr(o) + " is not JSON serializable")
TypeError: <open file '/tmp/demo.json', mode 'w' at 0x1006576f0> is not JSON serializable

You want to use json.dump() here (no s), but :

json.dump(profiles, outfile)

The object to serialise comes first, the file object second.

answered Nov 8, 2014 at 21:17

Martijn Pieters

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2 Comments

baltermia Over a year ago

For some odd reason, this answer is accepted even though OP pointed out that using dump instead of dumps makes no difference. This was 6 years ago, I guess OP found an answer eventually.

Martijn Pieters Over a year ago

@speyck: it is accepted because the OP admitted that they used json.dump() wrong in the comments here, since deleted. I've removed their later edit, since it doesn't apply here.

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