Just to extend the answers a bit with what to do with the parsed object:
# JSON Parsing example
require "rubygems" # don't need this if you're Ruby v1.9.3 or higher
require "json"
string = '{"desc":{"someKey":"someValue","anotherKey":"value"},"main_item":{"stats":{"a":8,"b":12,"c":10}}}'
parsed = JSON.parse(string) # returns a hash
p parsed["desc"]["someKey"]
p parsed["main_item"]["stats"]["a"]
# Read JSON from a file, iterate over objects
file = open("shops.json")
json = file.read
parsed = JSON.parse(json)
parsed["shop"].each do |shop|
p shop["id"]
end