Using ast.literal_eval on a nested dictionary

Question

I'm using ast.literal_eval to change the data I receive from json.loads() into a Python dictionary; however if I should just be going about this an entirely different way - feel free to point that out as well. ``` # Authentication buf = StringIO.StringIO() c = pycurl.Curl() c.setopt(c.URL, "https://kippt.com/api/account") c.setopt(c.WRITEFUNCTION, buf.write) c.setopt(c.HTTPHEADER, header) c.perform() result = buf.getvalue() buf.close() print result # Printing Output data_string = json.dumps(result) jsonload = json.loads(data_string) jsondict = ast.literal_eval(jsonload) ``` Currently it works properly with a one line JSON return, eg: {"username": "my_username", "api_token": "my_api_token"} and I can get the values properly with: ``` print jsondict['username'] print jsondict['api_token'] ``` The part where I'm having an issue with is when the data is nested, such as: {"meta": {"next": null, "total_count": 6, "previous": null, "limit": 20, "offset": 0}, "objects": [{"rss_url": "https://…

Accepted Answer

`ast.literal_eval` has no problem with nested dictionaries:

```
>>> ast.literal_eval("{'a': {'b':'c'}}")
{'a': {'b': 'c'}}
```

`ast.literal_eval` is breaking because the data are, in fact, JSON… And JSON is not valid Python. Specifically, `null` is not a valid Python literal.

Why not just use `json.loads()` to load the data?

Using ast.literal_eval on a nested dictionary

Solution

Problem