converting txt data (from log file) into json using python?

Question

I have a log file which has the format as shown below:

parsed: {'priority': '14', 'timestamp': '2021-04-13 13:42:07', 'hostname': 'invi-dev-gw2', 'rootname': 'root', 'pid': '27889', 'message': 'Session STARTED - Client[ID:8242, Physical: 111.119.187.47, Virtual: 10.1.0.66] <--> Service[Name:Attendance1, ID:704, Physical: 192.168.3.18, Virtual: 10.1.0.67]'}
parsed: {'priority': '15', 'timestamp': '2021-04-13 13:42:07', 'hostname': 'invi-dev-gw3', 'rootname': 'root', 'pid': '27890', 'message': 'Session STOPPED - Client[ID:8242, Physical: 111.119.187.47, Virtual: 10.1.0.66] <--> Service[Name:Attendance1, ID:704, Physical: 192.168.3.18, Virtual: 10.1.0.67]'}

Basically there are two data's in the text file. The next step is to convert the text data into a JSON using Python. So far I have the python script for the JSON conversion as shown below:

# Python program to convert text 
# file to JSON 
import json 


# the file to be converted to 
# json format 
filename = 'output.txt'

# dictionary where the lines from 
# text will be stored 
dict1 = {} 

# creating dictionary 
with open(filename) as fh: 

    for line in fh: 

        # reads each line and trims of extra the spaces 
        # and gives only the valid words 
        command, description = line.strip().split(None, 1) 

        dict1[command] = description.strip() 

# creating json file 
# the JSON file is named as test1 
out_file = open("test.json", "w") 
json.dump(dict1, out_file, indent = 4, sort_keys = False) 
out_file.close() 

Now the JSON file is created but it showed only one data (The output should show 2 data) as shown below:

    "parsed:": "{'priority': '15', 
                 'timestamp': '2021-04-13 13:42:07',
                  'hostname': 'invi-dev-gw3',
                  'rootname': 'root', 
                  'pid': '27890', 
                  'message': 'Session STOPPED - Client[ID:8242, Physical: 111.119.187.47, Virtual: 10.1.0.66] <--> Service[Name:Attendance1, ID:704, Physical: 192.168.3.18, Virtual: 10.1.0.67]'
}"

I don't know why it's not printing the whole data. It should show another data in the JSON file but showed only one. Can anyone help me with this?

Answer 1

Where you have dict1[command] = description.strip() you really want something more like: dict1[command].append(description.strip()) (so dict1 really wants to be a list). There is one additional wrinkle in that you likely wanted to use json.loads() but your input data uses single quotes so let's parse it with ast

I would try something like:

import ast
import collections
import json

data_in = [
    "parsed: {'priority': '14', 'timestamp': '2021-04-13 13:42:07', 'hostname': 'invi-dev-gw2', 'rootname': 'root', 'pid': '27889', 'message': 'Session STARTED - Client[ID:8242, Physical: 111.119.187.47, Virtual: 10.1.0.66] <--> Service[Name:Attendance1, ID:704, Physical: 192.168.3.18, Virtual: 10.1.0.67]'}",
    "parsed: {'priority': '15', 'timestamp': '2021-04-13 13:42:07', 'hostname': 'invi-dev-gw3', 'rootname': 'root', 'pid': '27890', 'message': 'Session STOPPED - Client[ID:8242, Physical: 111.119.187.47, Virtual: 10.1.0.66] <--> Service[Name:Attendance1, ID:704, Physical: 192.168.3.18, Virtual: 10.1.0.67]'}"
]

data_out = collections.defaultdict(list)
for row in data_in:
    command, command_text = [value.strip() for value in row.split(":", 1)]
    data_out[command].append(ast.literal_eval(command_text))

print(json.dumps(data_out, indent=2))