convert string to other type in python

Question

Hi everyone I have a simple problem but I don't find the solution, I have a function that returns something like that

[[4, 'adr', 0, 0, 1, '2016-04-05T13:00:01'], [115, 'adr', 0, 0, 1, '2016-04-05T14:00:01'], [226, 'adr', 0, 0, 1, '2016-04-05T15:00:01'], [337, 'adr', 0, 0, 1, '2016-04-05T16:00:01']]

when I check de type of this variable type(data)say that is a string <type 'str'> I want to create a loop to get each element like this

item 1 [4, 'adr', 0, 0, 1, '2016-04-05T13:00:01']

item 2 [115, 'adr', 0, 0, 1, '2016-04-05T14:00:01']

I try to convert the string in a list, a tuple... but nothing work, any idea how to change the string to any type that I can do a loop and get the items

when I try to convert in a tuple or string I have this result

('[', '[', '4', ',', ' ', "'", 'a', 'd', 'r', "'", ',', ' ', '0', ',', ' ', '0', ',', ' ', '1', ',', ' ', "'", '2', '0', '1', '6', '-', '0', '4', '-', '0', '5', 'T', '1', '3', ':', '0', '0', ':', '0', '1', "'", ']', ',', ' ', '[', '1', '1', '5', ',', ' ', "'", 'a', 'd', 'r', "'", ',', ' ', '0', ',', ' ', '0', ',', ' ', '1', ',', ' ', "'", '2', '0', '1', '6', '-', '0', '4', '-', '0', '5', 'T', '1', '4', ':', '0', '0', ':', '0', '1', "'", ']', ',', ' ', '[', '2', '2', '6', ',', ' ', "'", 'a', 'd', 'r', "'", ',', ' ', '0', ',', ' ', '0', ',', ' ', '1', ',', ' ', "'", '2', '0', '1', '6', '-', '0', '4', '-', '0', '5', 'T', '1', '5', ':', '0', '0', ':', '0', '1', "'", ']', ',', ' ', '[', '3', '3', '7', ',', ' ', "'", 'a', 'd', 'r', "'", ',', ' ', '0', ',', ' ', '0', ',', ' ', '1', ',', ' ', "'", '2', '0', '1', '6', '-', '0', '4', '-', '0', '5', 'T', '1', '6', ':', '0', '0', ':', '0', '1', "'", ']', ']')

Possible duplicate of [Convert string representation of list to list in Python](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1894269/convert-string-representation-of-list-to-list-in-python) — LinkBerest, Sep 09 '16 at 18:30

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 09 '16 at 18:22

You might consider to use literal_eval from ast module.

In [8]: from ast import literal_eval

In [9]: a = "[[4, 'adr', 0, 0, 1, '2016-04-05T13:00:01'], [115, 'adr', 0, 0, 1, '2016-04-05T14:00:01'], [226, 'adr', 0, 0, 1, '2016-04-05T15:00:01'], [337, 'adr', 0, 0, 1, '2016-04-05T16:00:01']]"

In [10]: type(a)
Out[10]: str

In [11]: b = literal_eval(a)

In [12]: type(b)
Out[12]: list

In [13]: b
Out[13]: 
[[4, 'adr', 0, 0, 1, '2016-04-05T13:00:01'],
 [115, 'adr', 0, 0, 1, '2016-04-05T14:00:01'],
 [226, 'adr', 0, 0, 1, '2016-04-05T15:00:01'],
 [337, 'adr', 0, 0, 1, '2016-04-05T16:00:01']]

Then you have a proper list and can easily iterate on it to get it's element.

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 09 '16 at 18:22

The easiest, and most dangerous, solution would be to do

eval( data )

Dangerous because you have to trust there is nothing malicious in that data.

You could write a regex to verify that the string/data is properly formatted; not knowing what that format is, I can't help with that.

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 09 '16 at 18:24

You could use ast.literal_eval:

import ast
myteststr = "[[4, 'adr', 0, 0, 1, '2016-04-05T13:00:01'], [115, 'adr', 0, 0, 1, '2016-04-05T14:00:01'], [226, 'adr', 0, 0, 1, '2016-04-05T15:00:01'], [337, 'adr', 0, 0, 1, '2016-04-05T16:00:01']]"
pyobj = ast.literal_eval(myteststr)
print(pyobj)

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 13 '16 at 17:23

Hi everyone I finally resolve the problem like this

data = {}
data = {'names': []}
for item in project_name:
  data['names'].append(item)
  data.update({item: {}})
  jobs_running = []
  jobs_pending = []
  for row in all_rows:
    if (str(item) == row[1]):
      parsed_t = dp.parse(str(row[5]))
      t_in_seconds = parsed_t.strftime('%s')

      jobs_running.append([ (t_in_seconds), (row[3]) ])
      jobs_pending.append([ (t_in_seconds), (row[4]) ])
      data[item].update({'jobs_running': jobs_running})
      data[item].update({'jobs_pending': jobs_pending})

So my data structure is like this see image

convert string to other type in python

4 Answers4