JSON-

Stands for Java Script Object Notation, JSON is an open standard text based data interchange format which is easy for machines to parse and generate.

JSON in python

Python has a built in package called json. json module can be imported in python to work with json data as shown below.

import json

To Convert data from JSON to Python -Parse JSON

We can parse JSON string by using the json.loads() method.

import json
# JSON:
x='{"fruit":"apple", "color":"red"}'
# parse json
y=json.loads(x)
# the result is a Python dictionary:
print(y["fruit"])

output

apple

To convert data from Python to JSON

We can convert Python Object into a JSON string by using the json.dumps() method.

import json

# a Python object (dict):
x = {
  "fruit": "apple",
  "color": "red"
}

# convert into JSON:
y = json.dumps(x)

# the result is a JSON string:
print(y)

Output

{"fruit": "apple", "color": "red"}

We can convert following types of Python objects into JSON strings:

• dict
• list
• tuple
• string
• int
• float
• True
• False
• None

On converting the Python to JSON, below table is showing the Python objects converted into the corresponding JSON (JavaScript) equivalent:

Python	JSON
dict	Object
list	Array
tuple	Array
str	String
int	Number
float	Number
True	true
False	false
None	null

To Format the Result

indent parameter is used to define the number of indent:

import json

# a Python object (dict):
x = {
  "Fruit": "Apple",
  "Color": "Red",
  "Quantity": 12
}

# convert into JSON with indent as 4:
y = json.dumps(x, indent=4)

# the result is a JSON string:
print(y)

Output

{
    "Fruit": "Apple",
    "Color": "Red",
    "Quantity": 12
}

seperators parameter is used to change the default separator value as shown below,  default value is (“, “, “: “), which means using a comma and a space to separate each object, and a colon and a space to separate keys from values:

import json

# a Python object (dict):
x = {
  "Fruit": "Apple",
  "Color": "Red",
  "Quantity": 12
}

# convert into JSON with indent as 4 & seperators(". ", " = "):
y = json.dumps(x, indent=4,separators=(". ", " = "))

# the result is a JSON string:
print(y)

Output

{
    "Fruit" = "Apple". 
    "Color" = "Red". 
    "Quantity" = 12
}

To Sort the Result

sort_keys parameter to specify if the result should be sorted or not:

import json

# a Python object (dict):
x = {
  "Fruit": "Apple",
  "Color": "Red",
  "Quantity": 12
}

# indent parameter will set the indent as 4:
# seperators parameter will change the default seperator values:
# sort_keys parameter will sort or order the results
y = json.dumps(x, indent=4,separators=(". ", " = "), sort_keys=True)

# the result is a JSON string:
print(y)

Output

{
    "Color" = "Red". 
    "Fruit" = "Apple". 
    "Quantity" = 12
}