load .json into python; UnicodeDecodeError

Question

I am trying to load a json file into python with no success. I have been googling a solution for the past few hours and just cannot seem to get it to load. I have tried to load it using the same json.load('filename') function that has worked for everyone. I keep getting : "UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0xc2 in postion 124: invalid continuation byte"

Here is the code I am using

import json
json_data = open('myfile.json')
for line in json_data:
    data = json.loads(line) <--I get an error at this. 

Here is a sample line from my file

{"topic":"security","question":"Putting the Biba-LaPadula Mandatory Access Control Methods to Practise?","excerpt":"Text books on database systems always refer to the two Mandatory Access Control models; Biba for the Integrity objective and Bell-LaPadula for the Secrecy or Confidentiality objective.\n\nText books ...\r\n        "}

What is my error if this seems to have worked for everyone in every example I have googled?

Answer 1

Have you tried:

json.loads(line.decode("utf-8"))

Similar question asked here: UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc2

Edit: If the above does not work,

json.loads(line.decode("utf-8","ignore"))

will.