Parse JSON with colon in key

Question

I am trying to parse the following JSON using Python / Django:

[
  {
    "street": "KEELER",
    ":id": 1421
  }
]

Within my Django templates, I can successfully access the street key like:

{{ obj.street }}

but cannot access the id. I have tried the following (all taken from various SO questions):

{{ obj.id }} , {{ obj.:id }}, {{ obj[':id'] }}

I have seen the couple of other questions in SO addressing a similar issue, but none seem to help.

Try to fix the json data rather than trying to figuring out how to work with bad json data. — Aamir Rind, Jun 17 '13 at 15:49
this is json data coming from a government site using Socrata Open Data api (soda). I have no access to it. This is how the data is presented. — Progger, Jun 17 '13 at 15:51
What json parser (what does your import and parse code look like) and python version are you using? — Endophage, Jun 17 '13 at 15:52
I think You can iterate over `iteritems` and select value by key which satisfy your requirements. — oleg, Jun 17 '13 at 15:54
As well as what @Pace has mentioned, is the trailing `,` also deliberate? — Jon Clements, Jun 17 '13 at 15:54
@Progger ahhh okies - so simply, you just want to know how to access that in a Django template - the JSON data is actually well formed... — Jon Clements, Jun 17 '13 at 15:55
@Progger have a look at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8252387/how-do-i-access-dictionary-keys-that-contain-hyphens-from-within-a-django-templa — Jon Clements, Jun 17 '13 at 15:59
@Progger Even if the data comes from a third-party, you must be passing it in via a `Context` at some point, so you ought to be able to translate `:id` to `id` at that point. — Aya, Jun 17 '13 at 16:02

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 17 '13 at 15:57

2

Your object is wrapped in an array.

obj = [
  {
    "street": "KEELER",
    ":id": 1421
  }
]

:id should be accessed like obj[0][':id'].

answered Jun 17 '13 at 15:57

000

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Ah, sorry. :( Django has some deep magic that I don't like very much. (I'm subscribed to the python list but not the django list) – 000 Jun 17 '13 at 16:25

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 17 '13 at 18:24

1

So as @Aya recommended, what I did was dump the JSON to a string, replace all instances of ":id" with "id", then convert it back to JSON. At that point, I was able to access the ID like:

{{ obj.id }}

answered Jun 17 '13 at 18:24

Progger

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score 0 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:50

0

You could write your own parser and just parse the json as a string, there you can add custom parsing features to the id field. Although being in java, this might help

edited May 23 '17 at 11:50

Community

1
1

answered Jun 17 '13 at 15:55

David Karlsson

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if you click the link, they implement the corresponding functionality in java – David Karlsson Jun 17 '13 at 16:12

Parse JSON with colon in key

3 Answers3