python csv writer is adding quotes when not needed

Question

I am having issues with writing json objects to a file using csv writer, the json objects seem to have multiple double quotes around them thus causing the json objects to become invalid, here is the result:

"{""user.CustomAttribute.ISOLanguageCode"": ""en"", ""user.Email"": ""[email protected]""

what I want is

{"user.CustomAttribute.ISOLanguageCode": "en", "user.Email"": "[email protected]"}

here is how I open the file, perhaps there is an argument I can pass to prevent this from happening?

file = csv.writer(open(localResultPath + ".txt",'ab'),delimiter = '|')

here is how I write to the file, the last append adds the json as a string

list.append(pk)
list.append(email)
list.append(json)
file.writerow(list)

Answer 1

Switch off auto-quoting with quoting=csv.QUOTE_NONE, and set quotechar to the empty string:

file = csv.writer(open(localResultPath + ".txt",'ab'), 
                  delimiter='|', quoting=csv.QUOTE_NONE, quotechar='')

Even with csv.QUOTE_NONE the csv.writer() will still want to quote the quotechar if left set to anything but an empty string, if present in the value. The default quote character is " and JSON values are full of those.

Demo:

>>> from cStringIO import StringIO
>>> import csv
>>> f = StringIO()
>>> writer = csv.writer(f, delimiter='|', quoting=csv.QUOTE_NONE, quotechar='')
>>> writer.writerow(['{"user.CustomAttribute.ISOLanguageCode": "en"}'])
>>> f.getvalue()
'{"user.CustomAttribute.ISOLanguageCode": "en"}\r\n'

Answer 2

You have to change the quotechar to s.th. else than " :

csv.writer(csvfile, delimiter='|',quotechar='&', quoting=csv.QUOTE_MINIMAL)

Make sure that the quote character does not appear in your objects, obviously.

If you switch off quoting you have to be careful when your delimiter appears in the JSON-Object as well. Better way is using the json module and its functions json.dump() and json.load() for writing and reading the objects