JSON to pandas DataFrame

Question

I found a quick and easy solution to what I wanted using json_normalize() included in pandas 1.01.

from urllib2 import Request, urlopen
import json

import pandas as pd    

path1 = '42.974049,-81.205203|42.974298,-81.195755'
request=Request('http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/elevation/json?locations='+path1+'&sensor=false')
response = urlopen(request)
elevations = response.read()
data = json.loads(elevations)
df = pd.json_normalize(data['results'])

This gives a nice flattened dataframe with the json data that I got from the Google Maps API.

Check this snip out.

# reading the JSON data using json.load()
file = 'data.json'
with open(file) as train_file:
    dict_train = json.load(train_file)

# converting json dataset from dictionary to dataframe
train = pd.DataFrame.from_dict(dict_train, orient='index')
train.reset_index(level=0, inplace=True)

Hope it helps :)

Optimization of the accepted answer:

The accepted answer has some functioning problems, so I want to share my code that does not rely on urllib2:

import requests
from pandas import json_normalize
url = 'https://www.energidataservice.dk/proxy/api/datastore_search?resource_id=nordpoolmarket&limit=5'

response = requests.get(url)
dictr = response.json()
recs = dictr['result']['records']
df = json_normalize(recs)
print(df)

Output:

        _id                    HourUTC               HourDK  ... ElbasAveragePriceEUR  ElbasMaxPriceEUR  ElbasMinPriceEUR
0    264028  2019-01-01T00:00:00+00:00  2019-01-01T01:00:00  ...                  NaN               NaN               NaN
1    138428  2017-09-03T15:00:00+00:00  2017-09-03T17:00:00  ...                33.28              33.4              32.0
2    138429  2017-09-03T16:00:00+00:00  2017-09-03T18:00:00  ...                35.20              35.7              34.9
3    138430  2017-09-03T17:00:00+00:00  2017-09-03T19:00:00  ...                37.50              37.8              37.3
4    138431  2017-09-03T18:00:00+00:00  2017-09-03T20:00:00  ...                39.65              42.9              35.3
..      ...                        ...                  ...  ...                  ...               ...               ...
995  139290  2017-10-09T13:00:00+00:00  2017-10-09T15:00:00  ...                38.40              38.4              38.4
996  139291  2017-10-09T14:00:00+00:00  2017-10-09T16:00:00  ...                41.90              44.3              33.9
997  139292  2017-10-09T15:00:00+00:00  2017-10-09T17:00:00  ...                46.26              49.5              41.4
998  139293  2017-10-09T16:00:00+00:00  2017-10-09T18:00:00  ...                56.22              58.5              49.1
999  139294  2017-10-09T17:00:00+00:00  2017-10-09T19:00:00  ...                56.71              65.4              42.2 

PS: API is for Danish electricity prices

You could first import your json data in a Python dictionnary :

data = json.loads(elevations)

Then modify data on the fly :

for result in data['results']:
    result[u'lat']=result[u'location'][u'lat']
    result[u'lng']=result[u'location'][u'lng']
    del result[u'location']

Rebuild json string :

elevations = json.dumps(data)

Finally :

pd.read_json(elevations)

You can, also, probably avoid to dump data back to a string, I assume Panda can directly create a DataFrame from a dictionnary (I haven't used it since a long time :p)

Just a new version of the accepted answer, as python3.x does not support urllib2

from requests import request
import json
from pandas.io.json import json_normalize

path1 = '42.974049,-81.205203|42.974298,-81.195755'
response=request(url='http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/elevation/json?locations='+path1+'&sensor=false', method='get')
elevations = response.json()
elevations
data = json.loads(elevations)
json_normalize(data['results'])

Here is small utility class that converts JSON to DataFrame and back: Hope you find this helpful.

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
from pandas.io.json import json_normalize

class DFConverter:

    #Converts the input JSON to a DataFrame
    def convertToDF(self,dfJSON):
        return(json_normalize(dfJSON))

    #Converts the input DataFrame to JSON 
    def convertToJSON(self, df):
        resultJSON = df.to_json(orient='records')
        return(resultJSON)

The problem is that you have several columns in the data frame that contain dicts with smaller dicts inside them. Useful Json is often heavily nested. I have been writing small functions that pull the info I want out into a new column. That way I have it in the format that I want to use.

for row in range(len(data)):
    #First I load the dict (one at a time)
    n = data.loc[row,'dict_column']
    #Now I make a new column that pulls out the data that I want.
    data.loc[row,'new_column'] = n.get('key')