Last modified on 01 Oct 2021.

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a format that encodes objects in a string.

Terms

  • Serialization : convert an object → string.
  • Deserialization : convert string → object.
# object
{foo: [1, 4, 7, 10], bar: "baz"}

# string
'{"foo":[1,4,7,10],"bar":"baz"}'

JSON with python[ref]

Basics

import json

# DECODING
json.load()

# ENCODING
json.dumps()
json.dump()

Dict to JSON

def dict_to_json(dictionary):
    """ Transform dictionary that contain numpy instances into a
        JSON serializable dictionary.

    Parameters
    ----------
    dictionary: dict
        The dictionary to tranform.

    Returns
    -------
    dict
        The JSON serializable dictionary.
    """
    dict_json = {}
    for key in dictionary:
        if isinstance(dictionary[key], dict):
            dict_json[key] = dict_to_json(dictionary[key])

        elif isinstance(dictionary[key], str):
            dict_json[key] = dictionary[key]

        elif hasattr(dictionary[key], "__len__"):
            dict_json[key] = [to_json(v) for v in dictionary[key]]

        elif isinstance(dictionary[key], (np.integer, int, np.int64)):
            dict_json[key] = int(dictionary[key])

        elif isinstance(dictionary[key], (np.floating, float)):
            dict_json[key] = float(dictionary[key])

        elif isinstance(dictionary[key], (pd.Timedelta, pd.Timestamp,
            dt.timedelta, dt.datetime, dt.date, dt.time)):
            dict_json[key] = str(dictionary[key])

        elif isinstance(dictionary[key], np.bool_): # numpy boolean
            dict_json[key] = bool(dictionary[key])

        elif dictionary[key] is None:
            dict_json[key] = None

        elif dictionary[key] == True:
            dict_json[key] = bool(True)

        elif dictionary[key] == False:
            dict_json[key] = bool(False)

        else:
            log.debug('type pb: %s', type(dictionary[key]))
            dict_json[key] = 'not JSON serializable'

    return dict_json

•Notes with this notation aren't good enough. They are being updated. If you can see this, you are so smart. ;)