python json dumps

Question

i have the following string, need to turn it into a list without u'':

my_str = "[{u'name': u'squats', u'wrs': [[u'99', 8]], u'id': 2}]"

i can get rid of " by using

import ast
str_w_quotes = ast.literal_eval(my_str)

then i do:

import json
json.dumps(str_w_quotes)

and get

[{\"id\": 2, \"name\": \"squats\", \"wrs\": [[\"55\", 9]]}]

Is there a way to get rid of backslashes? the goal is:

[{"id": 2, "name": "squats", "wrs": [["55", 9]]}]

Answer 1

This works but doesn't seem too elegant

import json
json.dumps(json.JSONDecoder().decode(str_w_quotes))

Answer 2

json.dumps thinks that the " is part of a the string, not part of the json formatting.

import json
json.dumps(json.load(str_w_quotes))

should give you:

 [{"id": 2, "name": "squats", "wrs": [["55", 9]]}]

Answer 3

>>> "[{\"id\": 2, \"name\": \"squats\", \"wrs\": [[\"55\", 9]]}]".replace('\\"',"\"")
'[{"id": 2, "name": "squats", "wrs": [["55", 9]]}]'

note that you could just do this on the original string

>>> "[{u'name': u'squats', u'wrs': [[u'99', 8]], u'id': 2}]".replace("u\'","\'")
"[{'name': 'squats', 'wrs': [['99', 8]], 'id': 2}]"

Answer 4

You don't dump your string as JSON, rather you load your string as JSON.

import json
json.loads(str_w_quotes)

Your string is already in JSON format. You do not want to dump it as JSON again.