Valid JSON giving JSONDecodeError: Expecting , delimiter

Question

I'm trying to parse a json response data from youtube api but i keep getting an error.

Here is the snippet where it choking:

data = json.loads("""{ "entry":{ "etag":"W/\"A0UGRK47eCp7I9B9WiRrYU0.\"" } }""")

..and this happens:

JSONDecodeError: Expecting , delimiter: line 1 column 23 (char 23)

I've confirmed that it's valid json and I have no control over the formatting of it so how can I get past this error?

Also you might want to check your json if all lines end with commas except the last line — arnold, Aug 27 '20 at 09:20

score 90 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 06 '12 at 06:39

90

You'll need a r before """, or replace all \ with \\. This is not something you should care about when read the json from somewhere else, but something in the string itself.

data = json.loads(r"""{ "entry":{ "etag":"W/\"A0UGRK47eCp7I9B9WiRrYU0.\"" } }""")

see here for more information

answered Feb 06 '12 at 06:39

Felix Yan

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Ok but you need to explain why. The input needs to be passed a rawstring to avoid the `\"` backslash-escape being misinterpreted. – smci Jan 03 '20 at 15:35
25

what's the solution if the string is stored in a variable? – Praneeth Kumar Mar 31 '21 at 10:38
Store in it a variable as a rawstring – Jacob Bayer Jan 17 '23 at 10:07
How to store json in a variable as a raw string? @JacobBayer – sheth7 Mar 30 '23 at 18:38
@sheth7 `raw_json = r"""{ "entry":{...}}"""` – bwdm Mar 30 '23 at 18:57

score 17 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 06 '12 at 06:41

17

You need to add r before your json string.

>>> st = r'{ "entry":{ "etag":"W/\"A0UGRK47eCp7I9B9WiRrYU0.\"" } }'
>>> data = json.loads(st)
>>>

answered Feb 06 '12 at 06:41

RanRag

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I think it's better to use """ instead of ' to enclose the json because the data can have unescaped single quotes in it. Thanks for the answer. – userBG Feb 06 '12 at 06:50
@ofko: I know that I just wrote this for clarity. – RanRag Feb 06 '12 at 06:53

Valid JSON giving JSONDecodeError: Expecting , delimiter

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