Extract Python dictionary from string

Question

I have a string with valid python dictionary inside

data = "Some string created {'Foo': u'1002803', 'Bar': 'value'} string continue etc."

I need to extract that dict. I tried with regex but for some reason re.search(r"\{(.*?)\}", data) did not work. Is there any better way extract this dict?

Answer 1

From @AChampion's suggestion.

>>> import re
>>> import ast
>>> x = ast.literal_eval(re.search('({.+})', data).group(0))
>>> x
{'Bar': 'value', 'Foo': '1002803'}

so the pattern you're looking for is re.search('({.+})', data)

You were supposed to extract the curly braces with the string, so ast.literal_eval can convert the string to a python dictionary . you also don't need the r prefix as { or } in a capturing group, () would be matched literally.