Python: json.loads returns items prefixing with 'u'

Question

The u- prefix just means that you have a Unicode string. When you really use the string, it won't appear in your data. Don't be thrown by the printed output.

For example, try this:

print mail_accounts[0]["i"]

You won't see a u.

Everything is cool, man. The 'u' is a good thing, it indicates that the string is of type Unicode in python 2.x.

http://docs.python.org/2/howto/unicode.html#the-unicode-type

The d3 print below is the one you are looking for (which is the combination of dumps and loads) :)

Having:

import json

d = """{"Aa": 1, "BB": "blabla", "cc": "False"}"""

d1 = json.loads(d)              # Produces a dictionary out of the given string
d2 = json.dumps(d)              # Produces a string out of a given dict or string
d3 = json.dumps(json.loads(d))  # 'dumps' gets the dict from 'loads' this time

print "d1:  " + str(d1)
print "d2:  " + d2
print "d3:  " + d3

Prints:

d1:  {u'Aa': 1, u'cc': u'False', u'BB': u'blabla'}
d2:  "{\"Aa\": 1, \"BB\": \"blabla\", \"cc\": \"False\"}"
d3:  {"Aa": 1, "cc": "False", "BB": "blabla"}

Unicode is an appropriate type here. The JSONDecoder docs describe the conversion table and state that json string objects are decoded into Unicode objects

https://docs.python.org/2/library/json.html#encoders-and-decoders

JSON                    Python
==================================
object                  dict
array                   list
string                  unicode
number (int)            int, long
number (real)           float
true                    True
false                   False
null                    None

"encoding determines the encoding used to interpret any str objects decoded by this instance (UTF-8 by default)."