Parse JSON data with varying parent keys using python

Question

Here is my working example

jsonData = {
    "3": {
        "map_id": "1",
        "marker_id": "3",
        "title": "Your title here",
        "address": "456 Example Ave",
        "desc": "Description",
        "pic": "",
        "icon": "",
        "linkd": "",
        "lat": "3.14",
        "lng": "-22.98",
        "anim": "0",
        "retina": "0",
        "category": "1",
        "infoopen": "0",
        "other_data": ["0"]
    },
    "4": {
        "map_id": "1",
        "marker_id": "4",
        "title": "Title of Place",
        "address": "123 Main St, City, State",
        "desc": "insert description",
        "pic": "",
        "icon": "",
        "linkd": "",
        "lat": "1.23",
        "lng": "-4.56",
        "anim": "0",
        "retina": "0",
        "category": "0",
        "infoopen": "0",
        "other_data": ["0"]
    }

I am having such a hard time getting the title and address keys. Here is what I have tried:

for each in testJson:
    print(each["title"])

and I get the following error TypeError: string indices must be integers. I don't understand why this isn't working.

I have tried so many variations to get the key data, but I just can't get it to work. I can't really change the raw JSON either because my real JSON data is a huge file. I have looked on stackoverflow for a similarly formatted JSON example (e.g., here) but have come up short. I assume there is something wrong with the way my JSON is formatted, because I have parsed JSON before with the above code without any problems.

RoadRunner · Accepted Answer · 2020-04-14 18:04:55Z

1

Your getting that error because your looping over the keys, which don't have title and address properties. Those properties exist in the inner dictionaries, which are the values of the dictionary.

Here is how you can iterate over the dict.values() instead:

for value in jsonData.values():
    print(value["title"], value["address"])

Which will give you the title and address:

Your title here 456 Example Ave
Title of Place 123 Main St, City, State

If you want to find out which key your iterating over, you can loop over the tuple (key, value) pair from dict.items():

for key, value in jsonData.items():
    print(f"key = {key}, title = {value['title']}, address = {value['address']}")

Which will show the key with the address and title:

key = 3, title = Your title here, address = 456 Example Ave
key = 4, title = Title of Place, address = 123 Main St, City, State

edited Apr 14, 2020 at 18:04

answered Apr 14, 2020 at 17:48

RoadRunner

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1 Comment

scottsmith Over a year ago

Thanks @RoadRunner, it works! I hadn't seen the .values() used this way with JSON data, and your explanation makes good sense. Really appreciate it.

Jim · Accepted Answer · 2020-04-14 17:49:40Z

1

for… in loops iterate over the keys of dictionaries, not their values. If you want to iterate over their values, you can either use .values():

for value in someDict.values():

…or you can iterate over items(), which will give you the key and the value as a tuple:

for key, value in someDict.items():

The reason why you are getting the error message you are is because when you try to get title out of each, each is actually the key, .i.e. "3" or "4". Python will let you get individual characters out of a string with things like someString[0] to get the first character, but it doesn't make sense to access things like someString['title'].

answered Apr 14, 2020 at 17:49

Jim

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