Python Convert string to dict

Question

I have a string :

'{tomatoes : 5 , livestock :{cow : 5 , sheep :2 }}' 

and would like to convert it to

{
  "tomatoes" : "5" , 
  "livestock" :"{"cow" : "5" , "sheep" :"2" }"
}

Any ideas ?

Answer 1

This has been settled in 988251 In short; use the python ast library's literal_eval() function.

import ast
my_string = "{'key':'val','key2':2}"
my_dict = ast.literal_eval(my_string)

Answer 2

The problem with your input string is that it's actually not a valid JSON because your keys are not declared as strings, otherwise you could just use the json module to load it and be done with it.

A simple and dirty way to get what you want is to first turn it into a valid JSON by adding quotation marks around everything that's not a whitespace or a syntax character:

source = '{tomatoes : 5 , livestock :{cow : 5 , sheep :2 }}'

output = ""
quoting = False
for char in source:
    if char.isalnum():
        if not quoting:
            output += '"'
            quoting = True
    elif quoting:
        output += '"'
        quoting = False
    output += char

print(output)  #  {"tomatoes" : "5" , "livestock" :{"cow" : "5" , "sheep" :"2" }}

This gives you a valid JSON so now you can easily parse it to a Python dict using the json module:

import json

parsed = json.loads(output)
# {'livestock': {'sheep': '2', 'cow': '5'}, 'tomatoes': '5'}