How to parse an unquoted json string to a dict in python?

Question

I have string in the format of:

'{comm:comm123,date: Aug 29, 2019 12:30:00 PM,value:qwert}'

I want to get something like this:

{
   'comm': 'comm123',
   'date': Aug 29, 2019 12:30:00 PM,   (As a date)
   'value': 'qwert'
}

I have tried using literal_eval and eval but they do not help. i also tried using json library but it does not seem to serve any purpose.

May be [this answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/34812991/6699447) help you — Abdul Niyas P M, Sep 10 '19 at 11:27
There is some ambiguity in the string, because date has commas and colons. '2019 12' seems a key in that string — geckos, Sep 10 '19 at 11:35
The string is stored in this format in a file. I am reading from that file and trying to parse it in the format shown. — utkj97, Sep 10 '19 at 11:45
Are the keys always the same and in that order? I have two ideas but need clarification. — h4z3, Sep 10 '19 at 11:47
If the keys are always the same length you can apply quotes based on position, that would help you to get some json — geckos, Sep 10 '19 at 11:52
Other option is split by first and last comma, this will isolate the date pair so you can parse it afterwards — geckos, Sep 10 '19 at 11:55

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 10 '19 at 12:27

Your string is indeed ambiguous, however, you can use re.findall:

import re
d = '{comm:comm123,date: Aug 29, 2019 12:30:00 PM,value:qwert}'
new_d = re.findall('[A-Z][a-z]{2}\s\d{2},\s\d{4}\s\d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2} [APM]{2}|\w+', d)
result = {new_d[i]:new_d[i+1] for i in range(0, len(new_d), 2)}

Output:

{'comm': 'comm123', 'date': 'Aug 29, 2019 12:30:00 PM', 'value': 'qwert'}

score -1 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 25 '20 at 13:42

-1

Horrible. The keys seem like they should be unambiguous though - if you know they are always alpha-only could extract them using something like ([a-zA-Z]+):, then use that to get the "other" bits of the string which must be the values?

answered Feb 25 '20 at 13:42

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How to parse an unquoted json string to a dict in python?

2 Answers2