ValueError: Invalid \escape unable to load json from file

Question

I have a issues loading a json file of user and password in python to retrieve data from the rest api which uses authentication to extract the json data from the url.

When I have put the user, password and uri in the json file and run the script it gives me this error in the json libary :

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:/Python27/Script.py", line 10, in <module>
    config = json.load(config_file) 
  File "C:\Python27\lib\json\__init__.py", line 290, in load
    parse_constant=parse_constant, object_pairs_hook=object_pairs_hook, **kw)
  File "C:\Python27\lib\json\__init__.py", line 338, in loads
    return _default_decoder.decode(s)
  File "C:\Python27\lib\json\decoder.py", line 364, in decode
    obj, end = self.raw_decode(s, idx=_w(s, 0).end())
  File "C:\Python27\lib\json\decoder.py", line 380, in raw_decode
    obj, end = self.scan_once(s, idx)
ValueError: Invalid \escape: line 7 column 42 (char 270)

This is the code:

import urllib2
import json

 #Load the config file
with open('Config.json') as config_file :    
    config = json.load(config_file) 
# Load your username from the config file
user = config['user']
# Load your password from the config file
password = config['password']

enter code here

The json file from which it loads sample is here:

{
    "user" : "api",
    "password" : "admin1234",
    "uri": "https://datafeeds.emailsecurity.com/test",
    "resetUri": "https://datafeeds.emailsecurity.com/test/test?reset=2017-07-01T00:00:00Z",
    "files" : {
        "cookiesFilePath" : "C:\\abc",
        "logsFilePath" : "C:\\abc",
    }
}

Answer 1

The problem is the double backslash as others have said. You want to escape both of the backslashes, for example:

bad_str = '{"a" : "C:\\ b"}'
good_str = '{"a" : "C:\\\\ b"}'

#JSONDecodeError
print(json.loads(bad_str))

# OK
print(json.loads(good_str))

Answer 2

The data file contains invalid json:

>>> json.loads('{"cookiesFilePath": "C:\\abc"}') 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>                                                                                                
  ...                                                                                             
ValueError: Invalid \escape: line 1 column 24 (char 23)

The problem is the "c:\\\\abc" strings. the json decoder interprets the double backslash as an escaped single backslash, making the character after the colon '\\a' , which is not valid json.

It isn't possible to generate the json in your example using the standard python json encoder:

>>> json.dumps({"cookiesFilePath": "C:\abc"})                                                                            
'{"cookiesFilePath": "C:\\u0007bc"}'                                                                                                 
>>> json.dumps({"cookiesFilePath": "C:\\abc"})                                                                
'{"cookiesFilePath": "C:\\\\abc"}' 

which suggests that the json in your file has been created using a broken tool, or edited manually.

Answer 3

{
    "user" : "api",
    "password" : "admin1234",
    "uri": "https://datafeeds.emailsecurity.com/test",
    "resetUri": "https://datafeeds.emailsecurity.com/test/test?reset=2017-07-01T00:00:00Z",
    "files" : {
        "cookiesFilePath" : "C:\\abc",
        "logsFilePath" : "C:\\abc"
     }
}

Try without comma in json file.

With comma:

"logsFilePath" : "C:\\abc",

Without comma at end:

"logsFilePath" : "C:\\abc"