json.loads() is returning a unicode object instead of a dictionary

Question

I'm reading in json from a file on a remote server using fabric: ``` from StringIO import StringIO output = StringIO() get(file_name, output) output = output.getvalue() ``` The value of `output` is now: `'"{\n \"status\": \"failed\", \n \"reason\": \"Record already exists.\"\n}"'` When I try to parse this string to a dictionary using `json.loads(output)` its returns the unicode object `u'{
 "status": "failed", 
 "reason": "Record already exists."
}'` rather than a dictionary. I've come up with a fairly bad fix, just passing the new unicode object back into json.loads(): `json.loads(json.loads(output))` Is there any way other solution to this? Cheers

Accepted Answer

Your data is escaped.

```
json.loads(output.decode('string-escape').strip('"'))
```

should give you desired results:

```
Out[12]: {'reason': 'Record already exists.', 'status': 'failed'}
```

json.loads() is returning a unicode object instead of a dictionary

Solution

Problem