Python Json Parse

Question

I have made a mistake during my storage of json strings to a database. Accidentally I did not store the string as json but I stored it as the string formation of the Object.

I received

my_jstring['field']

and I have inserted as a string to the database.

my_jstring['field'] is not json but a python json object. Is it possible to parse again this object that is in string format?

My string is the following:

'"\'{u\'\'full_name\'\': u\'\'Dublin City\'\', u\'\'url\'\': u\'\'https://api.twitter.com/1.1/geo/id/7dde0febc9ef245b.json\'\', u\'\'country\'\': u\'\'Ireland\'\', u\'\'place_type\'\': u\'\'city\'\', u\'\'bounding_box\'\': {u\'\'type\'\': u\'\'Polygon\'\', u\'\'coordinates\'\': [[[-6.3873911, 53.2987449], [-6.3873911, 53.4110598], [-6.1078047, 53.4110598], [-6.1078047, 53.2987449]]]}, u\'\'contained_within\'\': [], u\'\'country_code\'\': u\'\'IE\'\', u\'\'attributes\'\': {}, u\'\'id\'\': u\'\'7dde0febc9ef245b\'\', u\'\'name\'\': u\'\'Dublin City\'\'}\'"'

• Martijn Pieters: Your data is further mangled; the double \'\' quotes for example are.. interesting. You did more than just run str() on this, perhaps? TBH I have no idea how you would have managed those.

Answer 1

Use ast.literal_eval() to parse Python literals back into a Python object.

You appear to have doubly qouted the value however, adding in extra single quotes. These need to be repaired too:

data = ast.literal_eval(data)
data = data[1:-1].replace("''", "'")
obj = ast.literal_eval(data)

Demo:

>>> import ast
>>> data = '"\'{u\'\'full_name\'\': u\'\'Dublin City\'\', u\'\'url\'\': u\'\'https://api.twitter.com/1.1/geo/id/7dde0febc9ef245b.json\'\', u\'\'country\'\': u\'\'Ireland\'\', u\'\'place_type\'\': u\'\'city\'\', u\'\'bounding_box\'\': {u\'\'type\'\': u\'\'Polygon\'\', u\'\'coordinates\'\': [[[-6.3873911, 53.2987449], [-6.3873911, 53.4110598], [-6.1078047, 53.4110598], [-6.1078047, 53.2987449]]]}, u\'\'contained_within\'\': [], u\'\'country_code\'\': u\'\'IE\'\', u\'\'attributes\'\': {}, u\'\'id\'\': u\'\'7dde0febc9ef245b\'\', u\'\'name\'\': u\'\'Dublin City\'\'}\'"'
>>> data = ast.literal_eval(data)
>>> data = data[1:-1].replace("''", "'")
>>> obj = ast.literal_eval(data)
>>> obj
{u'country_code': u'IE', u'url': u'https://api.twitter.com/1.1/geo/id/7dde0febc9ef245b.json', u'country': u'Ireland', u'place_type': u'city', u'bounding_box': {u'type': u'Polygon', u'coordinates': [[[-6.3873911, 53.2987449], [-6.3873911, 53.4110598], [-6.1078047, 53.4110598], [-6.1078047, 53.2987449]]]}, u'contained_within': [], u'full_name': u'Dublin City', u'attributes': {}, u'id': u'7dde0febc9ef245b', u'name': u'Dublin City'}