reading a file with json data with python throw an error that I cannot identify

Question

I have the following json file named json.txt with the following data,

{"id":99903727,"nickname":"TEST_MLA_OFF","registration_date":"2010-12-03T14:19:33.000-04:00","country_id":"AR","user_type":"normal","logo":null,"points":0,"site_id":"MLA","permalink":"http://perfil.mercadolibre.com.ar/TEST_MLA_OFF","seller_reputation":{"level_id":null,"power_seller_status":null,"transactions":{"period":"12 months","total":25,"completed":25,"canceled":0,"ratings":{"positive":0,"negative":0,"neutral":1}}},"status":{"site_status":"deactive"}}

I obtained it using wget. I tried to load that json data with python using the following python code,

json_data = json.load('json.txt')
data = json.load(json_data)
json_data.close()

print data

but that throws the following error,

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "json-example.py", line 28, in <module>
    main()
  File "json-example.py", line 21, in main
    json_data = json.load('json.txt')
  File "/opt/sage-4.6.2-linux-64bit-ubuntu_8.04.4_lts-x86_64-Linux/local/lib/python/json/__init__.py", line 264, in load
    return loads(fp.read(),
AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'read'

I couldn't find googling what is the reason of the error.

Best regards.

Answer 1

Even better practice is to use the with statement.

with open('json.txt', 'r') as json_file:
    data = json.load(json_file)

This makes sure the file gets closed properly without you worrying about it.

Answer 2

You need to give json.load a file stream object:

json_file = open('json.txt')
data = json.load(json_file)
json_file.close()

print data