decoding json string in python

Question

I have the following JSON string (from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON)

{
        "name":"Product",
        "properties":
        {
                "id":
                {
                        "type":"number",
                        "description":"Product identifier",
                        "required":true
                },
                "name":
                {
                        "type":"string",
                        "description":"Name of the product",
                        "required":true
                },
                "price":
                {
                        "type":"number",
                        "minimum":0,
                        "required":true
                },
                "tags":
                {
                        "type":"array",
                        "items":
                        {
                                "type":"string"
                        }
                },
                "stock":
                {
                        "type":"object",
                        "properties":
                        {
                                "warehouse":
                                {
                                        "type":"number"
                                },
                                "retail":
                                {
                                        "type":"number"
                                }
                        }
                }
        }
}    

I am trying to decode this string using Python json library. I would like to access the node

properties - > stock - > properties - > warehouse.

I understand that json.loads() function stores the json string as a dictionary. But in this case properties is my key and everything under that are values. How do I access the above node.

import json
jsonText=""
file = open("c:/dir/jsondec.json")
for line in file.xreadlines():
    jsonText+=line
data = json.loads(jsonText)
for k,v in data.items():
    print k // shows name and properties
file.close();

Thanks

Answer 1

You can load json straight from the file like this:

 f = open("c:/dir/jsondec.json")
 data = json.load(f)

Based on your input string, data is now a dictionary that contains other dictionaries. You can just navigate up the dictionaries like so:

 node = data['properties']['stock']['properties']['warehouse']
 print str(node)