strange python issue, 'unicode' object has no attribute 'read'

Question

Here is my code and does anyone have any ideas what is wrong? I open my JSON content directly by browser and it works,

data = requests.get('http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/2.0/?method=library.getartists&api_key=4c22bd45cf5aa6e408e02b3fc1bff690&user=joanofarctan&format=json').text
data = json.load(data)
print type(data)
return data

thanks in advance, Lin

Answer 1

This error raised because the data is a unicode/str variable, change the second line of your code to resolve your error:

data = json.loads(data)

json.load get a file object in first parameter position and call the read method of this.

Also you can call the json method of the response to fetch data directly:

response = requests.get('http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/2.0/?method=library.getartists&api_key=4c22bd45cf5aa6e408e02b3fc1bff690&user=joanofarctan&format=json')
data = response.json()

Answer 2

requests.get(…).text returns the content as a single (unicode) string. The json.load() function however requires a file-like argument.

The solution is rather simple: Just use loads instead of load:

data = json.loads(data)

An even better solution though is to simply call json() on the response object directly. So don’t use .text but .json():

data = requests.get(…).json()

While this uses json.loads itself internally, it hides that implementation detail, so you can just focus on getting the JSON response.