• Loading JSON.
  • Here is an example JSON string: 
    jsonString = '{"a":"apple", "b": "bear", "c": "cat"}'
  • To convert the above into a dictionary, we need to import the json module. 
    import json
jsonString = '{"a":"apple", "b": "bear", "c": "cat"}'
# Need to call this method below:
# loads plural is required here:
json.loads
  • Don’t add a trailinig comma like so: 
    jsonString = '{"a":"apple", "b": "bear", "c": "cat"}'
  • We can check for exceptions with the try statement: 
    import json
from json import JSONDecodeError
jsonString = '{"a":"apple", "b": "bear", "c": "cat"}'
try:
      json.loads(jsonString)
# The decoder comes from the module and needs to be specifically imported.
except JSONDecodeError:
  print('Could not parse JSON!')
  • Dumping JSON Files 
    pythonDict = {'a':'apple', 'b': 'bear', 'c': 'cat'}
json.dumps(pythonDict)
  • This then outputs: 
    {"a":"apple", "b": "bear", "c": "cat"}
  • No need to add exception handling for the above, due to it being a Python Dictionary and formatted as a JSON string.
  • Custom JSON Decoders ``` class Animal: def init(self, name): self.name = name

pythonDict = {‘a’: Animal(‘aardvark’), ‘b’: Animal(‘bear’), ‘c’: Animal(‘cat’),} json.dumps(pythonDict)

* Running the above produces `Object of type Animal is not JSON serializable`
	* The JSON module does not know how to handle this.
		* We can overwrite this with a JSON encoder of our own.

class Animal: def init(self, name): self.name = name

class AnimalEncoder(JSONEncoder): # o is the object being passed into here, that needs to be decoded into JSON def default(self, o): if type(o) == Animal: return o.name # If it is not an animal, we pass it to the parent version of the decoder return super().default(o)

pythonDict = {‘a’: Animal(‘aardvark’), ‘b’: Animal(‘bear’), ‘c’: Animal(‘cat’),} json.dumps(pythonDict, cls=AnimalEncoder) ```

Updated: