Parsing a .json file with Python

Question

There is a lot of information on loading .json files, but I just cannot figure out what the problem is:

I have an external file called LocationHistory.json with various coordinates inside. For reference sake, this is how the data is listed:

{
    "data" : {
      "items" : [ {
        "kind" : "latitude#location",
        "timestampMs" : "1374870896803",
        "latitude" : 34.9482949,
        "longitude" : -85.3245474,
        "accuracy" : 2149
      }, {
        "kind" : "latitude#location",
        "timestampMs" : "1374870711762",
        "latitude" : 34.9857898,
        "longitude" : -85.3526902,
        "accuracy" : 2016
      }, {
        "kind" : "latitude#location",
        "timestampMs" : "1374870651752",
        "latitude" : 34.9857898,
        "longitude" : -85.3526902,
        "accuracy" : 2016
      }]
   }
 }

I'm trying to parse this information with:

import json

json_file = open ('LocationHistory.json')
json_string = json_file.read() 
json_data = json.loads (json_string) 

locations = json_data ["data"]

for location in locations:
    print location["timestampMS"], location["latitude"], location["longitude"], location["accuracy"]

Why am I getting the error:

line 10, in

print location["timestampMS"], location["latitude"], location["longitude"], location["accuracy"]

TypeError: string indices must be integers

All the information I can find to parse .json files explains this type of solution that I have. Where am I going wrong?

Thanks in advance, I'm sure it should be a simple mistake...

alecxe · Accepted Answer · 2015-09-27 21:18:39Z

1

You want to iterate over data items instead:

locations = json_data["data"]["items"]
for location in locations:  # now "locations" is a list of dictionaries
    # ...

answered Sep 27, 2015 at 21:18

alecxe

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2 Comments

Lee Venter Over a year ago

Thank you so much @alecxe, this solved my problem. All the information I could get always showed single lists not like mine with "data" with "list" in it. I appreciate your help

Lee Venter Over a year ago

alecxe, how do I parse the JSON data file into KML format rather than printing it out? Thanks :)

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