Parsing JSON Data

Introduction

JSON is a very complicated language that is hierarchical as XML is. There is a Python library that makes it easy to parse JSON files. The "loads" function will parse a JSON file into a Python dictionary object, it's that easy!

Parsing JSON Data with the json library.

Note that the code below has the array we used in the last section but it is in quotes which makes it a string. Then, we use json.loads(TheJSON) to convert the string into a Python dictionary.

import json

# note that this looks like a Phython array with dictionary entries but it is actually a text string that we will convert to a Phython array with dictionaries in it

TheJSON="""[
    {
        "Species": "Sequoia sempervirens",
        "Latitude": 40.509281,
        "Longitude": -123.893549
    },
    {
        "Species": "Sequoia sempervirens",
        "Latitude": 41.139693,
        "Longitude": -123.975794
    }
]"""

# this code converts the JSON string into a Phython array with the dictionary entries

ArrayOfDictionaryentries = json.loads(TheJSON)

print("The entire array: "+format(ArrayOfDictionaryentries))

Index=0
while (Index<len(ArrayOfDictionaryentries)):
	
	TheDictionary=ArrayOfDictionaryentries[Index]
	
	TheSpecies=TheDictionary["Species"];
	TheLatitude=TheDictionary["Latitude"];
	TheLongitude=TheDictionary["Longitude"];
	
	print("The species: "+format(TheSpecies))
	print("The location: "+format(TheLatitude)+", "+format(TheLongitude))
	
	Index+=1

Additional Resources

Python Documentation: JSON

W3Schools: Python JSON