Convert a bytes array into JSON format

json, python

Solution

Your `bytes` object is almost JSON, but it's using single quotes instead of double quotes, and it needs to be a string. So one way to fix it is to decode the `bytes` to `str` and replace the quotes. Another option is to use `ast.literal_eval`; see below for details. If you want to print the result or save it to a file as valid JSON you can load the JSON to a Python list and then dump it out. Eg,

import json

my_bytes_value = b'[{\'Date\': \'2016-05-21T21:35:40Z\', \'CreationDate\': \'2012-05-05\', \'LogoType\': \'png\', \'Ref\': 164611595, \'Classe\': [\'Email addresses\', \'Passwords\'],\'Link\':\'http://some_link.com\'}]'

# Decode UTF-8 bytes to Unicode, and convert single quotes 
# to double quotes to make it valid JSON
my_json = my_bytes_value.decode('utf8').replace("'", '"')
print(my_json)
print('- ' * 20)

# Load the JSON to a Python list & dump it back out as formatted JSON
data = json.loads(my_json)
s = json.dumps(data, indent=4, sort_keys=True)
print(s)

output

[{"Date": "2016-05-21T21:35:40Z", "CreationDate": "2012-05-05", "LogoType": "png", "Ref": 164611595, "Classe": ["Email addresses", "Passwords"],"Link":"http://some_link.com"}]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
[
    {
        "Classe": [
            "Email addresses",
            "Passwords"
        ],
        "CreationDate": "2012-05-05",
        "Date": "2016-05-21T21:35:40Z",
        "Link": "http://some_link.com",
        "LogoType": "png",
        "Ref": 164611595
    }
]

As Antti Haapala mentions in the comments, we can use `ast.literal_eval` to convert `my_bytes_value` to a Python list, once we've decoded it to a string.

from ast import literal_eval
import json

my_bytes_value = b'[{\'Date\': \'2016-05-21T21:35:40Z\', \'CreationDate\': \'2012-05-05\', \'LogoType\': \'png\', \'Ref\': 164611595, \'Classe\': [\'Email addresses\', \'Passwords\'],\'Link\':\'http://some_link.com\'}]'

data = literal_eval(my_bytes_value.decode('utf8'))
print(data)
print('- ' * 20)

s = json.dumps(data, indent=4, sort_keys=True)
print(s)

Generally, this problem arises because someone has saved data by printing its Python `repr` instead of using the `json` module to create proper JSON data. If it's possible, it's better to fix that problem so that proper JSON data is created in the first place.

Problem

I want to parse a `bytes` string in JSON format to convert it into python objects. This is the source I have: ``` my_bytes_value = b'[{\'Date\': \'2016-05-21T21:35:40Z\', \'CreationDate\': \'2012-05-05\', \'LogoType\': \'png\', \'Ref\': 164611595, \'Classe\': [\'Email addresses\', \'Passwords\'],\'Link\':\'http://some_link.com\'}]' ``` And this is the desired outcome I want to have: ``` [{ "Date": "2016-05-21T21:35:40Z", "CreationDate": "2012-05-05", "LogoType": "png", "Ref": 164611595, "Classes": [ "Email addresses", "Passwords" ], "Link": "http://some_link.com"}] ``` First, I converted the bytes to string: ``` my_new_string_value = my_bytes_value.decode("utf-8") ``` but when I try to invoke `loads` to parse it as JSON: ``` my_json = json.loads(my_new_string_value) ``` I get this error: ``` json.decoder.JSONDecodeError: Expecting value: line 1 column 174 (char 173) ```

Original source

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