Python JSON – Read a JSON String

Learn to read JSON string in Python with the help of json.loads() method which converts a given JSON string into a Python object.

For quick reference, below is the code which reads a JSON string into a Python object.

import json

#JSON String
json_string = '{"name": "Lokesh", "age": 38, "locations": ["India", "USA"]}'

# Convert json string to object
json_dict = json.loads(json_string)

# Ready to use object further into the program
print(json_dict)

1. json.loads() Method

The json.loads() deserializes a given JSON string into a python dictionary/list 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

If the data being deserialized is not a valid JSON document, a JSONDecodeError will be raised.

2. Python Read JSON String Examples

Example 1: Reading a JSON String to Python List

In given example, we are reading a list of JSON objects into a Python list.

import json

# JSON String
json_string = '[{"name": "Lokesh", "age": 38}, {"name": "Brian", "age": 48}]'

# Read into Python list
py_list = json.loads(json_string)

print(type(py_list))
print(py_list)

Program output.

<class 'list'>
[{'name': 'Lokesh', 'age': 38}, {'name': 'Brian', 'age': 48}]

Example 2: Reading a JSON String to Python Dictionary

In given example, we are reading a list of JSON objects into a Python list.

import json

# JSON String
json_string = '{"name": "Lokesh", "age": 38}, {"name": "Brian", "age": 48}'

# Read into Python list
py_list = json.loads(json_string)

print(type(py_list))
print(py_list)

Program output.

<class 'dict'>
{'name': 'Lokesh', 'age': 38, 'locations': ['India', 'USA']}

Happy Learning !!