It can be hard

To dig for gold with a fork.

The right tools

I have to admit.

I read json the hard way.

When i say the hard way, I meant the super hard way.

By reading a file line by line and looping through.

Hard when you don’t know the easy way

Kind of funny but there wasn’t a straightforward guide to showing me the way to do it.

Partly because of the particular problem I was facing.

Normal json file

{
"pizzas" : [
	{
      "name": "Kebab King",
      "size": ["small", "medium", "large"],
      "price": ["200", "350", "550"]
    },
	{
      "name": "Vegetarian Paradise",
      "size": ["small", "medium", "large"],
      "price": ["150", "250", "490"]
    }
  ]
} 

I call this a normal .json file because it features a main key called “pizzas”

Jq beautify

Here we use jq to beautify the json file and make it more readable

Command: jq ‘.’ pizzas.json

{
  "pizzas": [
    {
      "name": "Kebab King",
      "size": [
        "small",
        "medium",
        "large"
      ],
      "price": [
        "200",
        "350",
        "550"
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Vegetarian Paradise",
      "size": [
        "small",
        "medium",
        "large"
      ],
      "price": [
        "150",
        "250",
        "490"
      ]
    }
  ]
}

json module to the rescue

There is a native python module called json.

We’ll first import it and load our .json file.

import json

with open("pizzas.json") as file:
    data = json.load(file)

Python dict conversion

The above command: json.load converts our .json file to a python dict.

Let’s have fun now!

Length of json file

import json

with open("pizzas.json") as file:
    data = json.load(file)
    print (len(data))
    #Result: 1

The length gives us a result of 1 as it is taking from the root node (or root key)

To get the number of nodes associated with ‘pizza’

We change our command to include pizzas

    print (len(data["pizzas"]))
    #Result: 2

Showing values of keys

Python dicts use something called key-value pairs.

Now, we want to get the first element of the dictionary.

Remember that arrays, lists and dictionaries always start with first element 0!

    print (data["pizzas"][0])

#Result: {'name': 'Kebab King', 'size': ['small', 'medium', 'large'], 'price': ['200', '350', '550']}

Going deeper

Now, I want some more precise information.

I have to navigate through the keys.

Say I want the price of a Kebab King size small

    print (data["pizzas"][0]["price"][0])

It’s very easy to navigate through.

See you tomorrow!

\ Codarren /

Credits

python docs json

example docs

Featured image - json power rangers