Complex Json Deserialization in Python

Question

I have a json format that looks like the following and I wish to deserialize it with python using import json

{
    "FATHERFIELD 1": [
       {
         "childfield 1":[
         ],
         "childfield 2": [
             {
                 "a": 1,
                 "b": 2,
                 "c": {
                     "c_1": 3
                 }
             }
         ]
       }
    ],
    "FATHERFIELD 2": [
     ]
}

In python, how would one use the json.loads() function to call the respective fields? Specifically, if I used

foo = json.loads(childfield2)

what kind of object would this be in python?

Answer 1

You have one JSON document ; you'd either read that document into a Python string (from a file or network connection) or open a file object for JSON data stored on disk, and decode it using the json module . json.loads() decodes JSON data from a string, json.load() does so from a file object.

Once loaded, you have a Python object; a dictionary containing other objects, including more dictionaries and lists. You'd address these like any other Python object:

dict_from_json['FATHERFIELD 1'][0]['childfield 1']

addresses a key in the first dictionary in the list addressed by the 'FATHERFIELD 1' key in the top-level dictionary.

Answer 2

import json
myfamily = {
  "child1" : {
    "name" : "Emil",
    "year" : 2004,"
  },
  "child2" : {
    "name" : "Tobias",
    "year" : 2007
  },
  "child3" : {
    "name" : "Linus",
    "year" : 2011
  }
}

print(json.myfamily)