[python] Iterating through a JSON object

I am trying to iterate through a JSON object to import data, i.e. title and link. I can't seem to get to the content that is past the :.

JSON:

[
    {
        "title": "Baby (Feat. Ludacris) - Justin Bieber",
        "description": "Baby (Feat. Ludacris) by Justin Bieber on Grooveshark",
        "link": "http://listen.grooveshark.com/s/Baby+Feat+Ludacris+/2Bqvdq",
        "pubDate": "Wed, 28 Apr 2010 02:37:53 -0400",
        "pubTime": 1272436673,
        "TinyLink": "http://tinysong.com/d3wI",
        "SongID": "24447862",
        "SongName": "Baby (Feat. Ludacris)",
        "ArtistID": "1118876",
        "ArtistName": "Justin Bieber",
        "AlbumID": "4104002",
        "AlbumName": "My World (Part II);\nhttp://tinysong.com/gQsw",
        "LongLink": "11578982",
        "GroovesharkLink": "11578982",
        "Link": "http://tinysong.com/d3wI"
    },
    {
        "title": "Feel Good Inc - Gorillaz",
        "description": "Feel Good Inc by Gorillaz on Grooveshark",
        "link": "http://listen.grooveshark.com/s/Feel+Good+Inc/1UksmI",
        "pubDate": "Wed, 28 Apr 2010 02:25:30 -0400",
        "pubTime": 1272435930
    }
]

I tried using a dictionary:

def getLastSong(user,limit):
    base_url = 'http://gsuser.com/lastSong/'
    user_url = base_url + str(user) + '/' + str(limit) + "/"
    raw = urllib.urlopen(user_url)
    json_raw= raw.readlines()
    json_object = json.loads(json_raw[0])

    #filtering and making it look good.
    gsongs = []
    print json_object
    for song in json_object[0]:   
        print song

This code only prints the information before :. (ignore the Justin Bieber track :))

This question is related to python dictionary loops

The answer is

For Python 3, you have to decode the data you get back from the web server. For instance I decode the data as utf8 then deal with it:

 # example of json data object group with two values of key id
jsonstufftest = '{'group':{'id':'2','id':'3'}}
 # always set your headers
headers = {'User-Agent': 'Moz & Woz'}
 # the url you are trying to load and get json from
url = 'http://www.cooljson.com/cooljson.json'
 # in python 3 you can build the request using request.Request
req = urllib.request.Request(url,None,headers)
 # try to connect or fail gracefully
try:
    response = urllib.request.urlopen(req) # new python 3 code -jc
except:
    exit('could not load page, check connection')
 # read the response and DECODE
html=response.read().decode('utf8') # new python3 code
 # now convert the decoded string into real JSON
loadedjson = json.loads(html)
 # print to make sure it worked
print (loadedjson) # works like a charm
 # iterate through each key value
for testdata in loadedjson['group']:
    print (accesscount['id']) # should print 2 then 3 if using test json

If you don't decode you will get bytes vs string errors in Python 3.

for iterating through JSON you can use this:

json_object = json.loads(json_file)
for element in json_object: 
    for value in json_object['Name_OF_YOUR_KEY/ELEMENT']:
        print(json_object['Name_OF_YOUR_KEY/ELEMENT']['INDEX_OF_VALUE']['VALUE'])

Adding another solution (Python 3) - Iterating over json files in a directory and on each file iterating over all objects and printing relevant fields.

See comments in the code.

import os,json

data_path = '/path/to/your/json/files'  

# 1. Iterate over directory
directory = os.fsencode(data_path)
for file in os.listdir(directory):
    filename = os.fsdecode(file)
    # 2. Take only json files
    if filename.endswith(".json"):
        file_full_path=data_path+filename
        # 3. Open json file 
        with open(file_full_path, encoding='utf-8', errors='ignore') as json_data:
            data_in_file = json.load(json_data, strict=False)
            # 4. Iterate over objects and print relevant fields
            for json_object in data_in_file:
                print("ttl: %s, desc: %s" % (json_object['title'],json_object['description']) )

After deserializing the JSON, you have a python object. Use the regular object methods.

In this case you have a list made of dictionaries:

json_object[0].items()

json_object[0]["title"]

etc.

If you can store the json string in a variable jsn_string

import json

jsn_list = json.loads(json.dumps(jsn_string)) 
   for lis in jsn_list:
       for key,val in lis.items():
           print(key, val)

Output :

title Baby (Feat. Ludacris) - Justin Bieber
description Baby (Feat. Ludacris) by Justin Bieber on Grooveshark
link http://listen.grooveshark.com/s/Baby+Feat+Ludacris+/2Bqvdq
pubDate Wed, 28 Apr 2010 02:37:53 -0400
pubTime 1272436673
TinyLink http://tinysong.com/d3wI
SongID 24447862
SongName Baby (Feat. Ludacris)
ArtistID 1118876
ArtistName Justin Bieber
AlbumID 4104002
AlbumName My World (Part II);
http://tinysong.com/gQsw
LongLink 11578982
GroovesharkLink 11578982
Link http://tinysong.com/d3wI
title Feel Good Inc - Gorillaz
description Feel Good Inc by Gorillaz on Grooveshark
link http://listen.grooveshark.com/s/Feel+Good+Inc/1UksmI
pubDate Wed, 28 Apr 2010 02:25:30 -0400
pubTime 1272435930

This question has been out here a long time, but I wanted to contribute how I usually iterate through a JSON object. In the example below, I've shown a hard-coded string that contains the JSON, but the JSON string could just as easily have come from a web service or a file.

import json

def main():

    # create a simple JSON array
    jsonString = '{"key1":"value1","key2":"value2","key3":"value3"}'

    # change the JSON string into a JSON object
    jsonObject = json.loads(jsonString)

    # print the keys and values
    for key in jsonObject:
        value = jsonObject[key]
        print("The key and value are ({}) = ({})".format(key, value))

    pass

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

I would solve this problem more like this

import json
import urllib2

def last_song(user, limit):
    # Assembling strings with "foo" + str(bar) + "baz" + ... generally isn't 
    # as nice as using real string formatting. It can seem simpler at first, 
    # but leaves you less happy in the long run.
    url = 'http://gsuser.com/lastSong/%s/%d/' % (user, limit)

    # urllib.urlopen is deprecated in favour of urllib2.urlopen
    site = urllib2.urlopen(url)

    # The json module has a function load for loading from file-like objects, 
    # like the one you get from `urllib2.urlopen`. You don't need to turn 
    # your data into a string and use loads and you definitely don't need to 
    # use readlines or readline (there is seldom if ever reason to use a 
    # file-like object's readline(s) methods.)
    songs = json.load(site)

    # I don't know why "lastSong" stuff returns something like this, but 
    # your json thing was a JSON array of two JSON objects. This will 
    # deserialise as a list of two dicts, with each item representing 
    # each of those two songs.
    #
    # Since each of the songs is represented by a dict, it will iterate 
    # over its keys (like any other Python dict). 
    baby, feel_good = songs

    # Rather than printing in a function, it's usually better to 
    # return the string then let the caller do whatever with it. 
    # You said you wanted to make the output pretty but you didn't 
    # mention *how*, so here's an example of a prettyish representation
    # from the song information given.
    return "%(SongName)s by %(ArtistName)s - listen at %(link)s" % baby

I believe you probably meant:

from __future__ import print_function

for song in json_object:
    # now song is a dictionary
    for attribute, value in song.items():
        print(attribute, value) # example usage

NB: You could use song.iteritems instead of song.items if in Python 2.

Source: Stackoverflow.com