How to convert unquoted list of dictionaries to proper json format

Question

I have a list of dictionaries that are coming out unquoted, such as below:

'[{reason: NA, employeeName: bob smith}, {reason: NA, employeName: tom jones}]'

I need to have this converted to a proper json format to look like this:

[{"reason": "NA", "employeeName:" "bob smith"}, {"reason": "NA", "employeName": "tom jones"}]

How can I accomplish this?

Yes it is coming in as a string. This is just the input I received, can't modify that — Tom Smith, Apr 06 '22 at 14:17
How do you know that the proper interpretation isn't `[{"reason": "NA, employeeName: bob smith"}, {"reason": "NA, employeName: tom jones"}]`? There is a REASON why we need a delimiter around strings, you *cannot* reliably reconstruct the data without them. — jasonharper, Apr 06 '22 at 14:30

Ran A · Answer 1 · 2022-04-07T09:32:52.523

For the idea behind it, we took this list , and dealt with each dictionary alone , we turned it to a string so we can manipulate it. Next we're recreating the dictionary, by defining the key and the item foe each step: so as an example:

list_dict1 = '[{reason: NA, employeeName: bob smith}, {reason: NA, employeName: tom jones}]'
result=[]
# Converting string to list
list_dict2 = list_dict1.strip('][').split(', ')
# => it converts string representation of list to a list
for i in list_dict2:
# we loop on each inner "dictionary" rep
   s=str(i)# so we can use strip and split methods 
   d = dict([
    (x.split(':')[0].strip(), x.split(':')[1].strip("' "))
    for x in s.strip("{}").split(',')
   ])
   # for each x that represents key:item, cs we deleted {} and we split 
   them based on ","
   # Next we defined the key as being the first item , if we split using 
   # ":", and so on
   result.append(d)
   # we're appending each new dictionary created to our result list
result

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37935918/how-to-turn-a-string-with-unquoted-keys-into-a-dict-in-python — Ran A, Apr 06 '22 at 14:14
The input is coming in as a string so this won't work against that. — Tom Smith, Apr 06 '22 at 14:25
That question had the values quoted, so this is a different input — Tom Smith, Apr 06 '22 at 14:27

Dj0ulo · Accepted Answer · 2022-04-07T14:30:06.090

1

You should use regexp for that. On this site, you can test and learn how to use them.

So here is how I would solve your problem :

import json
import re

l = '[{reason: NA, employeeName: bob smith}, {reason: NA, employeName: tom jones, createdAt: 2021-04-28 17:04:52.684064+00:00}]'
res = []
objects = re.findall(r'{[^}]*}', l)
for o in objects:
    attr = re.findall(r'([^:,{]*):([^,}]*)', o)
    res.append({}) 
    for a in attr:
        res[-1][a[0].strip()] = a[1].strip()
print(json.dumps(res))

edited Apr 07 '22 at 14:30

answered Apr 06 '22 at 14:37

Dj0ulo

440
4
9

So this works for the most part, except I have some fields that are a date timestamp: createdAt: 2021-04-28 17:04:52.684064+00:00 Turns into "createdAt": "2021", "27 14": "44", "": "08", "00": "00" Any workaround for that? @Dj0ulo – Tom Smith Apr 07 '22 at 13:38
No problem I edited the second regexp ! – Dj0ulo Apr 07 '22 at 14:30

score -1 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 06 '22 at 17:11

Here is my small Python Example with the json lib.

import json

data=[{"reason": "NA", "employeeName:" "bob smith"}, {"reason": "NA", "employeName": "tom jones"}]

json.dumps(data)
# output:
#'[{"reason": "NA", "employeeName:": "bob smith"}, {"reason": "NA", "employeName": "tom jones"}]'

How to convert unquoted list of dictionaries to proper json format

3 Answers3