Unable to convert string representation of dictionary to dictionary

Question

I have a file containing dictionaries like this:

{'name': 'peter', 'age': '16', 'class': None}
{'name': 'john', 'age': '20', 'class': 'B'}
{'name': 'alex', 'age': '18', 'class': 'C'}

I am trying to read the contents from the file and convert the lines back into dictionaries.

with open(file.txt) as f:
    for line in f:
        if 'name' in line:
            d = json.loads(json.dumps(line.strip()))
            print(type(d))

But the type is still str? How can I get them to be dictionary object again?

@Jean-FrançoisFabre not really, `line` is not a valid JSON object. — vaultah, Apr 27 '17 at 16:51

falsetru · Accepted Answer · 2017-04-27T16:56:11.877

2

They're not JSON, but Python dictionary literals.

You can use ast.literal_eval to convert literals to python object.

import ast

with open('file.txt') as f:
    for line in f:
        if 'name' in line:
            d = ast.literal_eval(line)
            print(type(d))

edited Apr 27 '17 at 16:56

answered Apr 27 '17 at 16:51

falsetru

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But this is python 2 – ChaChaPoly Apr 27 '17 at 16:52
@rhillhouse, `ast.literal_eval` is available both in Python 2.x and Python 3.x. updated the link. – falsetru Apr 27 '17 at 16:53
@rhillhouse The duplicate question says that ast.literal_eval is from Python 2.6 – Josh Lee Apr 27 '17 at 16:53
@Jean-FrançoisFabre, You're right. I left the `json.loads` by mistake. Thank you for your pointing. – falsetru Apr 27 '17 at 16:57
Thank, this worked. I checked out the duplicate question, but as mentioned, it said it was for Python 2.6. Your answer worked perfectly. – ChaChaPoly Apr 27 '17 at 17:02

Unable to convert string representation of dictionary to dictionary

1 Answers1