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up vote 40 down vote favorite
15

I am getting a bit of headache just because a simple looking, easy statement is throwing some errors in my face.

I have a json file called strings.json like this:

"strings": [ {"-name": "city", "#text": "City"}, {"-name": "phone", "#text": "Phone"}, ..., {"-name": "address", "#text": "Address"} ]

then I want to read it, just that by now. I have this statements which I found out, but it's not working:

import json
from pprint import pprint

with open('strings.json') as json_data:
    d = json.loads(json_data)
    json_data.close()
    pprint(d)

The error spitted in my face was this:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/tegris/Downloads/i18n_fieldlink/i18n_fieldlink/android/values/manipulate_json.py", line 5, in <module>
d = json.loads(json_data)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/json/__init__.py", line 326, in loads
return _default_decoder.decode(s)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/json/decoder.py", line 366, in decode
obj, end = self.raw_decode(s, idx=_w(s, 0).end())
TypeError: expected string or buffer
[Finished in 0.1s with exit code 1]

EDITED

Changed from json.loads to json.load

and got this:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/tegris/Downloads/i18n_fieldlink/i18n_fieldlink/android/values/manipulate_json.py", line 5, in <module>
d = json.load(json_data)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/json/__init__.py", line 278, in load
**kw)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/json/__init__.py", line 326, in loads
return _default_decoder.decode(s)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/json/decoder.py", line 369, in decode
raise ValueError(errmsg("Extra data", s, end, len(s)))
ValueError: Extra data: line 829 column 1 - line 829 column 2 (char 18476 - 18477)
[Finished in 0.1s with exit code 1]
share|improve this question
1  
Are you sure that the file contains valid JSON? – Explosion Pills Nov 25 '13 at 17:16
    
possible duplicate of Parsing values from a JSON file in Python – Pureferret May 19 at 9:39

3 Answers 3

up vote 37 down vote accepted

You are using the json.loads method. More documentation here. This method is used for string arguments only. Luckily, there is a similarly named json.load method documented here. This one can be used directly on a file object.

Edit: The new message is a totally different problem. In that case, there is some invalid json in that file. For that, I would recommend running the file through a json validator.

share|improve this answer
    
hm...I changed from json.loads to json.load but I get that nice msg. – Doug Nov 25 '13 at 17:23
2  
Ah, well the new message is a totally different problem. In that case, there is some invalid json in that file. For that, I would recommend running the file through a json validator. – ubomb Nov 25 '13 at 17:26
    
got it! The file was missing EOF. The file was not correctly ended. I wouldn't notice that if it wasn't your good recommendation! Thanks! – Doug Nov 25 '13 at 17:32
    
ubomb, if you can change you answer to me to mark it as accepted. Be free! I'll mark it. – Doug Nov 25 '13 at 17:33
    
@Doug Done. Thanks! – ubomb Nov 25 '13 at 17:35
up vote 44 down vote

Here is a copy of code which works fine for me

import json

with open("test.json") as json_file:
    json_data = json.load(json_file)
    print(json_data)

with the data

{
    "a": [1,3,"asdf",true],
    "b": {
        "Hello": "world"
    }
}

you may want to wrap your json.load line with a try catch because invalid JSON will cause a stacktrace error message.

share|improve this answer
up vote 13 down vote

The problem is using with statement:

with open('strings.json') as json_data:
    d = json.load(json_data)
    pprint(d)

The file is going to be implicitly closed already. There is no need to call json_data.close() again.

share|improve this answer
    
Please remove the json_data.close(). As mentioned, it will be called implicitly. – Bonnie Varghese Nov 22 '14 at 7:31
    
Thanks @BonnieVarghese for pointing out. I corrected above – Zongjun Dec 2 '14 at 20:28
    
@Zongjun : Please correct loads to json.load(json_data). – Knight71 May 18 at 15:28

protected by Tats_innit Nov 11 at 1:26

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