How to parse JSON data from API response in Python?

Question

I am trying to write a script that will pull current status from our monitoring tools and update them in MS SQL DB. When I call the API I get a HUGE response in JSON format:

{
  "hoststatuslist": {
    "recordcount": "1084",
    "hoststatus": [
      {
        "@attributes": {
          "id": "XXXX"
        },
        "host_id": "XXX",
        "name": "XXXXX",
        "display_name": "XXXXXXX",
        "address": "XXXXXX",
        "alias": "XXXXXX",
        "status_text": "XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX",
        etc.
      },
      {
        "@attributes": {
          "id": "XXXX"
        },
        "host_id": "XXX",
        "name": "XXXXX",
        "display_name": "XXXXXXX",
        "address": "XXXXXX",
        "alias": "XXXXXX",
        "status_text": "XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX",
        etc.
      },
      etc.
    ]
  }
}

As you can see I get over 1000 host objects with attributes. I want to parse the response, so that I can add/update the MS SQL DB. I'm trying to parse out the host_id, name, and status_text for each host.

I tried to do something like this Python - Parsing JSON Data Set but I keep getting errors that the response object has no attribute read or decode.

Here is my current code:

import requests
import json

response = requests.get('url with API Key')
decoded_response = response.read().decode("UTF-8")
data = json.loads(decoded_response)
jsonData = data["hoststatus"]

for host in jsonData:
    Name = host.get("name")
    StatusText = host.get("status_text")

If anyone has a suggestion to do this with another language or tool I am open. I need to call about 20 APIs and put all the status/other information into a DB so that it's all in one location.

Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

Like @danil-kondratiev said, you can use response.json() and you don't need to encode/decode. Will this work for you?

import requests

response = requests.get('url with keys')

json_data = response.json() if response and response.status_code == 200 else None

if json_data and 'hoststatuslist' in json_data:
    if 'hoststatus' in json_data['hoststatuslist']:
        for hoststatus in json_data['hoststatuslist']['hoststatus']:
            host_name = hoststatus.get('name')
            status_text = hoststatus.get('status_text')