How to convert Unicode string to dictionary?

Question

I have a string with utf-8 encoding, like

>>> print s
"{u'name':u'Pradip Das'}"

Basically I load some data from JSON file and it loads as above. Now, I want to covert this string in to python dictionary. So I can do like:

>>> print d['name']
'Pradip Das'

See the link posted by Dmitry Grigoryev... you can import json and use json.load() rather than reading the JSON-formatted string. — THK, Nov 17 '15 at 10:41

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 17 '15 at 09:56

4

Use EVAL to convert string to dictionary.

d=eval(s)
print d['name']

Let me know if there are any batter way to do so.

answered Nov 17 '15 at 09:56

Pradip Das

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Yipee, it works for me. Thank you so much. – Husain Pansoliwala Mar 30 '17 at 09:53
This worked like a charm! Thanks! – yguw Jul 07 '17 at 21:02
it's a nice quick fix solution, but you should definitely be careful throwing eval around in your code https://nedbatchelder.com/blog/201206/eval_really_is_dangerous.html a better way would be like accepted answer's ast.literal_eval – Julian Jul 06 '18 at 07:00

JRodDynamite · Answer 2 · 2015-11-17T10:04:21.310

You can use the built-in ast.literal_eval:

>>> import ast
>>> a = ast.literal_eval("{'a' : '1', 'b' : '2'}")
>>> a
{'a': '1', 'b': '2'}
>>> type(a)
<type 'dict'>

This is safer than using eval. As the docs itself recommends it:

>>> help(ast.literal_eval)
Help on function literal_eval in module ast:

literal_eval(node_or_string)
    Safely evaluate an expression node or a string containing a Python
    expression.  The string or node provided may only consist of the following
    Python literal structures: strings, numbers, tuples, lists, dicts, booleans,
    and None.

Additionally, you can read this article which will explain why you should avoid using eval.

How to convert Unicode string to dictionary?

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