How to parse text file in Python and convert to JSON

Question

I have a large file formatted like the following:

"string in quotes"
string
string
string
number
|-

...this repeats for a while. I'm trying to convert it to JSON, so each of the chunks is like this:

"name": "string in quotes"
"description": "string"
"info": "string"
"author": "string"
"year": number

This is what I have so far:

import shutil
import os
import urllib

myFile = open('unformatted.txt','r')
newFile = open("formatted.json", "w")

newFile.write('{'+'\n'+'list: {'+'\n')

for line in myFile:
    newFile.write() // this is where I'm not sure what to write

newFile.write('}'+'\n'+'}')

myFile.close()
newFile.close()

I think I could do something like with the line number modulo something, but I'm not sure if that's the right way to go about it.

Answer 1

You can use itertools.groupby to group all the sections then json.dump the dicts to your json file:

from itertools import groupby
import json
names = ["name", "description","info","author", "year"]

with open("test.csv") as f, open("out.json","w") as out:
    grouped = groupby(map(str.rstrip,f), key=lambda x: x.startswith("|-"))
    for k,v in grouped:
        if not k:
            json.dump(dict(zip(names,v)),out)
            out.write("\n")

Input:

"string in quotes"
string
string
string
number
|-
"other string in quotes"
string2
string2
string2
number2

Output:

{"author": "string", "name": "\"string in quotes\"", "description": "string", "info": "string", "year": "number"}
{"author": "string2", "name": "\"other string in quotes\"", "description": "string2", "info": "string2", "year": "number2"}

To access just iterate over the file and loads:

In [6]: with open("out.json") as out:
            for line in out:
                 print(json.loads(line))
   ...:         
{'name': '"string in quotes"', 'info': 'string', 'author': 'string', 'year': 'number', 'description': 'string'}
{'name': '"other string in quotes"', 'info': 'string2', 'author': 'string2', 'year': 'number2', 'description': 'string2'}