Lesson 21: Working with JSON

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a popular data interchange format that is widely used for data storage and transmission. Python provides built-in support for working with JSON data through the json module.

Let’s explore working with JSON in Python:

import json

# Converting Python objects to JSON
person = {
    "name": "John Doe",
    "age": 30,
    "city": "New York"
}
json_data = json.dumps(person)
print(json_data)

# Writing JSON to a file
with open("person.json", "w") as file:
    json.dump(person, file)

# Reading JSON from a file
with open("person.json", "r") as file:
    json_data = json.load(file)
    print(json_data)

# Converting JSON to Python objects
person = json.loads(json_data)
print(person)

# Pretty-printing JSON
json_data = json.dumps(person, indent=4)
print(json_data)

# Handling JSON with nested objects
data = {
    "name": "John Doe",
    "age": 30,
    "address": {
        "street": "123 Main St",
        "city": "New York",
        "state": "NY"
    }
}
json_data = json.dumps(data, indent=4)
print(json_data)

# Accessing nested data
city = data["address"]["city"]
print(city)

Explanation:

• The json.dumps() function is used to convert Python objects to JSON-formatted strings.
• The json.dump() function is used to write JSON data to a file.
• The json.load() function is used to read JSON data from a file.
• The json.loads() function is used to convert JSON strings to Python objects.
• The indent parameter is used to specify the indentation level for pretty-printing JSON.
• JSON data can contain nested objects, and you can access nested data using indexing.

Now it’s time for a practical task:

Task 21:

Create a Python dictionary representing a book with attributes such as title, author, and publication year. Convert the dictionary to JSON and write it to a file called “book.json”. Then, read the JSON data from the file, convert it back to a Python object, and print the book details.

Once you’ve completed the task, you can proceed to the next lesson.