`json` — JSON encoder and decoder¶

Source code: Lib/json/__init__.py

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation), specified by RFC 7159 (which obsoletes RFC 4627) and by ECMA-404, is a lightweight data interchange format inspired by JavaScript object literal syntax (although it is not a strict subset of JavaScript [1] ).

Note

The term “object” in the context of JSON processing in Python can be ambiguous. All values in Python are objects. In JSON, an object refers to any data wrapped in curly braces, similar to a Python dictionary.

Warning

Be cautious when parsing JSON data from untrusted sources. A malicious JSON string may cause the decoder to consume considerable CPU and memory resources. Limiting the size of data to be parsed is recommended.

This module exposes an API familiar to users of the standard library marshal and pickle modules.

Encoding basic Python object hierarchies:

>>> import json
>>> json.dumps(['foo', {'bar': ('baz', None, 1.0, 2)}])
'["foo", {"bar": ["baz", null, 1.0, 2]}]'
>>> print(json.dumps("\"foo\bar"))
"\"foo\bar"
>>> print(json.dumps('\u1234'))
"\u1234"
>>> print(json.dumps('\\'))
"\\"
>>> print(json.dumps({"c": 0, "b": 0, "a": 0}, sort_keys=True))
{"a": 0, "b": 0, "c": 0}
>>> from io import StringIO
>>> io = StringIO()
>>> json.dump(['streaming API'], io)
>>> io.getvalue()
'["streaming API"]'

Compact encoding:

>>> import json
>>> json.dumps([1, 2, 3, {'4': 5, '6': 7}], separators=(',', ':'))
'[1,2,3,{"4":5,"6":7}]'

Pretty printing:

>>> import json
>>> print(json.dumps({'6': 7, '4': 5}, sort_keys=True, indent=4))
{
    "4": 5,
    "6": 7
}

Customizing JSON object encoding:

>>> import json
>>> def custom_json(obj):
...     if isinstance(obj, complex):
...         return {'__complex__': True, 'real': obj.real, 'imag': obj.imag}
...     raise TypeError(f'Cannot serialize object of {type(obj)}')
...
>>> json.dumps(1 + 2j, default=custom_json)
'{"__complex__": true, "real": 1.0, "imag": 2.0}'

Decoding JSON:

>>> import json
>>> json.loads('["foo", {"bar":["baz", null, 1.0, 2]}]')
['foo', {'bar': ['baz', None, 1.0, 2]}]
>>> json.loads('"\\"foo\\bar"')
'"foo\x08ar'
>>> from io import StringIO
>>> io = StringIO('["streaming API"]')
>>> json.load(io)
['streaming API']

Customizing JSON object decoding:

>>> import json
>>> def as_complex(dct):
...     if '__complex__' in dct:
...         return complex(dct['real'], dct['imag'])
...     return dct
...
>>> json.loads('{"__complex__": true, "real": 1, "imag": 2}',
...     object_hook=as_complex)
(1+2j)
>>> import decimal
>>> json.loads('1.1', parse_float=decimal.Decimal)
Decimal('1.1')

Extending JSONEncoder:

>>> import json
>>> class ComplexEncoder(json.JSONEncoder):
...     def default(self, obj):
...         if isinstance(obj, complex):
...             return [obj.real, obj.imag]
...         # Let the base class default method raise the TypeError
...         return super().default(obj)
...
>>> json.dumps(2 + 1j, cls=ComplexEncoder)
'[2.0, 1.0]'
>>> ComplexEncoder().encode(2 + 1j)
'[2.0, 1.0]'
>>> list(ComplexEncoder().iterencode(2 + 1j))
['[2.0', ', 1.0', ']']

Using json from the shell to validate and pretty-print:

$ echo '{"json":"obj"}' | python -m json
{
    "json": "obj"
}
$ echo '{1.2:3.4}' | python -m json
Expecting property name enclosed in double quotes: line 1 column 2 (char 1)

See Command-line interface for detailed documentation.

Note

JSON is a subset of YAML 1.2. The JSON produced by this module’s default settings (in particular, the default separators value) is also a subset of YAML 1.0 and 1.1. This module can thus also be used as a YAML serializer.

Note

This module’s encoders and decoders preserve input and output order by default. Order is only lost if the underlying containers are unordered.

Basic Usage¶

json.dump(obj, fp, *, skipkeys=False, ensure_ascii=True, check_circular=True, allow_nan=True, cls=None, indent=None, separators=None, default=None, sort_keys=False, **kw)¶

Serialize obj as a JSON formatted stream to fp (a .write()-supporting file-like object) using this Python-to-JSON conversion table.

Note

Unlike pickle and marshal, JSON is not a framed protocol, so trying to serialize multiple objects with repeated calls to dump() using the same fp will result in an invalid JSON file.

Parameters:

obj (object) – The Python object to be serialized.
fp (file-like object) – The file-like object obj will be serialized to. The json module always produces str objects, not bytes objects, therefore fp.write() must support str input.
skipkeys (bool) – If True, keys that are not of a basic type (str, int, float, bool, None) will be skipped instead of raising a TypeError. Default False.
ensure_ascii (bool) – If True (the default), the output is guaranteed to have all incoming non-ASCII and non-printable characters escaped. If False, all characters will be outputted as-is, except for the characters that must be escaped: quotation mark, reverse solidus, and the control characters U+0000 through U+001F.
check_circular (

json — JSON encoder and decoder¶

Basic Usage¶

`json` — JSON encoder and decoder¶