JSON with Python

This chapter covers how to encode and decode JSON objects using Python programming language. Let's start with preparing the environment to start our programming with Python for JSON.

Environment

Before you start with encoding and decoding JSON using Python, you need to install any of the JSON modules available. For this tutorial we have downloaded and installed Demjson as follows −

$tar xvfz demjson-1.6.tar.gz
$cd demjson-1.6
$python setup.py install

JSON Functions

Function	Libraries
encode	Encodes the Python object into a JSON string representation.
decode	Decodes a JSON-endoded string into a Python object.

Encoding JSON in Python (encode)

Python encode() function encodes the Python object into a JSON string representation.

Syntax

demjson.encode(self, obj, nest_level=0)

Example

The following example shows arrays under JSON with Python.

#!/usr/bin/python
import demjson

data = [ { 'a' : 1, 'b' : 2, 'c' : 3, 'd' : 4, 'e' : 5 } ]

json = demjson.encode(data)
print json

While executing, this will produce the following result −

[{"a":1,"b":2,"c":3,"d":4,"e":5}]

Decoding JSON in Python (decode)

Python can use demjson.decode() function for decoding JSON. This function returns the value decoded from json to an appropriate Python type.

Syntax

demjson.decode(self, txt)

Example

The following example shows how Python can be used to decode JSON objects.

#!/usr/bin/python
import demjson

json = '{"a":1,"b":2,"c":3,"d":4,"e":5}';

text = demjson.decode(json)
print  text

On executing, it will produce the following result −

{u'a': 1, u'c': 3, u'b': 2, u'e': 5, u'd': 4}