Understanding JSON and Its Use in Python

When processing data in Python, you often find yourself dealing with JSON format data.

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a widely used data format for exchanging and storing data, characterized by the following features:

• Concise and Readable: It's a text format that's easy for both humans and machines to understand.

• Key-Value Pairs: Data is expressed in pairs of names and values.

• Standard Library Support: Most programming languages provide libraries to handle JSON.

JSON consists of a set of key-value pairs enclosed by curly braces {}, formatted as below:

Example JSON

{
    "name": "CodeBuddy",
    "age": 30,
    "city": "New York"
}

JSON also supports array format enclosed by square brackets [].

Example JSON Array

[
    {
        "name": "CodeBuddy",
        "age": 30,
        "city": "New York"
    },
    {
        "name": "JohnCode",
        "age": 25,
        "city": "Los Angeles"
    }
]

JSON values can be numbers, strings, booleans (true/false), arrays, objects, or null.

Parsing and Utilizing JSON

In Python, you can use the built-in json module to convert JSON strings into Python objects using json.loads, or convert Python objects into JSON strings using json.dumps.

json.loads: Converting JSON to a Python Object

• Converts a JSON string into a Python data structure (e.g., dictionary).

• Commonly used to handle JSON data received from API responses.

json.loads Example

import json # Import the built-in json module

json_string = '{"name": "JohnCode", "age": 30, "city": "New York"}'

# Convert JSON string to Python object
data = json.loads(json_string)
print(data)

json.dumps: Converting an Object to JSON

• Converts an object (dictionary, list, etc.) into a JSON string.

• Used to send data in JSON format to an API.

json.dumps Example

import json # Import the built-in json module

data = {
    "name": "JohnCode",
    "age": 30,
    "city": "New York"
}

# Convert Python object to JSON string
json_string = json.dumps(data)
print(json_string)

Practice

Click the Run Code button on the right and try modifying the code to see your results!

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