parsing a file with python "'str' object has no attribute 'get'"

Question

I am a fairly new dev and trying to parse "id" values from this file. Running into the issue below.

My python code:

import ast
from pathlib import Path

file = Path.home() /'AppData'/'Roaming'/'user-preferences-prod'

with open(file, 'r') as f:
    contents = f.read()
    ids = ast.literal_eval(contents)
profileids = []
for data in ids:
    test= data.get('id')
    profileids.append(test)
print(profileids))

This returns the error: ValueError: malformed node or string: <_ast.Name object at 0x0000023D8DA4D2E8> at ids = ast.literal_eval(contents)

A snippet of the content in my file of interest:

{"settings":{"defaults":{"value1":,"value2":,"value3":null,"value4":null,"proxyid":null,"sites":{},"sizes":[],"value5":false},"value6":true,"value11":,"user":{"value9":"","value8": ,"value7":"","value10":""},"webhook":"},'profiles':[{'billing': {'address1': '', 'address2': '', 'city': '', 'country': 'United States', 'firstName': '', 'lastName': '', 'phone': '', 'postalCode': '', 'province': '', 'usesBillingInformation': False}, 'createdAt': 123231231213212, 'id': '23123123123213, 'name': ''

I need this code to be looped as there are multiple id values that I am interested in and need them all to be entered into a list.Hopefully I explained it all. the file type is "file" according to windows, I just view its contents with notepad.

Notepad should be enough to show that that is not a valid python literal so `ast.literal_eval` can't understand it. — Stop harming Monica, Sep 17 '19 at 12:41
@jferard I reverted you changes because you changed the data. Hopefully the OP know what is in their file better than us. — Stop harming Monica, Sep 17 '19 at 12:51
I don't think there is any hopes of parsing that data since it doesn't seem to conform to any specific format. I think your best bet is going to the source of the data and asking them to provide it in a coherent format. — Stop harming Monica, Sep 17 '19 at 16:37

CypherX · Answer 1 · 2019-09-17T03:20:34.847

0

It appears to me that you have a file with a string representation of a dict (dictionary). So, what you need to do is:

string_of_dict →ast.literal_eval()→ dict

Open file and read in the text into a string variable. Currently I think this string is going into ids.
Then convert the string representation of dict into a dict using ast library as shown below. Reference

import ast
string_of_dict = "{'muffin' : 'lolz', 'foo' : 'kitty'}"
ast.literal_eval(string_of_dict)

Output:

{'muffin': 'lolz', 'foo': 'kitty'}

Solution

Something like this should most likely work. You may have to tweak it a little bit.

import ast

with open(file, 'r') as f:
    contents = f.read()
ids = ast.literal_eval(contents)
profileids = []
for data in ids:
    test= data.get('id')
    profileids.append(test)
print(profileids)

edited Sep 17 '19 at 03:20

answered Sep 17 '19 at 03:12

CypherX

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Thanks! This returns this error tho: ValueError: malformed node or string: <_ast.Name object at 0x000001ADCC357550> – cryptopharoh Sep 17 '19 at 03:32
Also share some part of your file so we could figure out if it is a formatted as a dict or something else. You would need to share from the beginning of your file. – CypherX Sep 17 '19 at 03:51
Have adjusted the initial post with your requested info. though i replaced the real key name and removed the values for security. – cryptopharoh Sep 17 '19 at 12:27

parsing a file with python "'str' object has no attribute 'get'"

1 Answers1

Solution