Python json loads returns items prefixing with u

Question

I ll be receiving a JSON encoded string form Obj-C  and I am decoding a dummy string  for now  like the code below  My output comes out with character  u  prefixing each item      u i   u imap gmail com   u p   u aaaa     u i   u 333imap com   u p   u bbbb        How is JSON adding this unicode char  What s the best way to remove it    mail accounts      da      try      s       i   imap gmail com   p   aaaa     i   imap aol com   p   bbbb     i   333imap com   p   ccccc     i   444ap gmail com   p   ddddd     i   555imap gmail com   p   eee         jdata   json loads s      for d in jdata          for key  value in d iteritems                if key not in da                  da key    value             else                  da                      da key    value         mail accounts append da  except Exception  err      sys stderr write  Exception Error   s    str err    print mail accounts

User · Answer

Try this   mail accounts 0  encode  ascii

User · Answer

I kept running into this problem when trying to capture JSON data in the log with the Python logging library  for debugging and troubleshooting purposes  Getting the u character is a real nuisance when you want to copy the text and paste it into your code somewhere   As everyone will tell you  this is because it is a Unicode representation  and it could come from the fact that you   ve used json loads   to load in the data from a string in the first place    If you want the JSON representation in the log  without the u prefix  the trick is to use json dumps   before logging it out  For example   import json import logging    Prepare the data json data   json loads    key    value        Log normally and get the Unicode indicator logging warning  data      format json data    gt  gt  gt  WARNING root data   u key   u value      Dump to a string before logging and get clean output  logging warning  data      format json dumps json data     gt  gt  gt  WARNING root data    key    value

User · Answer

Those  u  characters being appended to an object signifies that the object is encoded in  unicode     If you want to remove those  u  chars from your object you can do this   import json  ast jdata   ast literal eval json dumps jdata     Removing uni-code chars   Let s checkout from python shell   gt  gt  gt  import json  ast  gt  gt  gt  jdata     u i   u imap gmail com   u p   u aaaa     u i   u 333imap com   u p   u bbbb     gt  gt  gt  jdata   ast literal eval json dumps jdata    gt  gt  gt  jdata    i    imap gmail com    p    aaaa      i    333imap com    p    bbbb

User · Answer

The u prefix means that those strings are unicode rather than 8-bit strings  The best way to not show the u prefix is to switch to Python 3  where strings are unicode by default  If that s not an option  the str constructor will convert from unicode to 8-bit  so simply loop recursively over the result and convert unicode to str  However  it is probably best just to leave the strings as unicode

User · Answer

Just replace the u  with a single quote     print  str replace mail accounts  u

User · Answer

Everything is cool  man  The  u  is a good thing  it indicates that the string is of type Unicode in python 2 x    http   docs python org 2 howto unicode html the-unicode-type

User · Answer

Unicode is an appropriate type here  The JSONDecoder docs describe the conversion table and state that json string objects are decoded into Unicode objects  https   docs python org 2 library json html encoders-and-decoders  JSON                    Python                                    object                  dict array                   list string                  unicode number  int             int  long number  real            float true                    True false                   False null                    None    encoding determines the encoding used to interpret any str objects decoded by this instance  UTF-8 by default

User · Answer

The u- prefix just means that you have a Unicode string   When you really use the string  it won t appear in your data   Don t be thrown by the printed output   For example  try this   print mail accounts 0   i     You won t see a u

User · Answer

The d3 print below is the one you are looking for  which is the combination of dumps and loads      Having   import json  d        Aa   1   BB    blabla    cc    False       d1   json loads d                 Produces a dictionary out of the given string d2   json dumps d                 Produces a string out of a given dict or string d3   json dumps json loads d       dumps  gets the dict from  loads  this time  print  d1       str d1  print  d2       d2 print  d3       d3   Prints   d1    u Aa   1  u cc   u False   u BB   u blabla   d2       Aa    1    BB      blabla      cc      False     d3     Aa   1   cc    False    BB    blabla

[python] Python: json.loads returns items prefixing with 'u'

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