Python JSON – Read a JSON file

Learn to read a JSON file in Python with the help of json.load() method which reads the data into a Python object.

For quick reference, below is the code which reads a JSON file to a Python object.

import json

with open('file_dir_location/data.json') as fp:
  data = json.load(fp)

# The data is of type 'dict'
print(data)

1. json.load() Method

The json.load() deserializes a given JSON file from the filesystem and converts to a python dictionary object using these conversion rules.

JSON	Python
object	dict
array	list
string	str
number (int)	int
number (real)	float
true	True
false	False
null	None

2. Python Read JSON File Examples

Example 1: Reading a JSON file from Filesystem

[
    {
        "id": 1,
        "name": "Lokesh",
        "username": "lokesh",
        "email": "lokesh@gmail.com"
    },
    {
        "id": 2,
        "name": "Brian",
        "username": "brian",
        "email": "brian@gmail.com"
    }
]

The users.json contains an array, so when we read the file – we get Python list object.

import json

with open('users.json') as fp:
  data = json.load(fp)

# list
print(type(data))

# Verify read data
print(data)

Program output.

<class 'list'>

[{'id': 1, 'name': 'Lokesh', 'username': 'lokesh', 'email': 'lokesh@gmail.com'}, 
 {'id': 2, 'name': 'Brian', 'username': 'brian', 'email': 'brian@gmail.com'}]

Example 2: Reading a JSON file from URL

We will use the Python Requests library which is a simple, yet elegant HTTP library.

import json
import requests

response = requests.get("https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/users")
users = json.loads(response.text)

print(users)

Program output has not been printed in this tutorial. Please run the program to see the complete output.

[{'id': 1, 'name': 'Leanne Graham', 'username': 'Bret', 'email': 'Sincere@april.biz'} ... ]

Happy Learning !!