Why can't Python parse this JSON data? [closed]

Question

I have this JSON in a file:

{     "maps": [         {             "id": "blabla",             "iscategorical": "0"         },         {             "id": "blabla",             "iscategorical": "0"         }     ],     "masks": [         "id": "valore"     ],     "om_points": "value",     "parameters": [         "id": "valore"     ] } 

I wrote this script to print all of the JSON data:

import json from pprint import pprint  with open('data.json') as f:     data = json.load(f)  pprint(data) 

This program raises an exception, though:

Traceback (most recent call last):   File "<pyshell#1>", line 5, in <module>     data = json.load(f)   File "/usr/lib/python3.5/json/__init__.py", line 319, in loads     return _default_decoder.decode(s)   File "/usr/lib/python3.5/json/decoder.py", line 339, in decode     obj, end = self.raw_decode(s, idx=_w(s, 0).end())   File "/usr/lib/python3.5/json/decoder.py", line 355, in raw_decode     obj, end = self.scan_once(s, idx) json.decoder.JSONDecodeError: Expecting ',' delimiter: line 13 column 13 (char 213) 

How can I parse the JSON and extract its values?

Answer 1

Your data is not valid JSON format. You have [] when you should have {}:

• [] are for JSON arrays, which are called list in Python
• {} are for JSON objects, which are called dict in Python

Here's how your JSON file should look:

{     "maps": [         {             "id": "blabla",             "iscategorical": "0"         },         {             "id": "blabla",             "iscategorical": "0"         }     ],     "masks": {         "id": "valore"     },     "om_points": "value",     "parameters": {         "id": "valore"     } } 

Then you can use your code:

import json from pprint import pprint  with open('data.json') as f:     data = json.load(f)  pprint(data) 

With data, you can now also find values like so:

data["maps"][0]["id"] data["masks"]["id"] data["om_points"] 

Try those out and see if it starts to make sense.