Python Accessing Nested JSON Data

Question

I'm trying to get the zip code for a particular city using zippopotam.us. I have the following code which works, except when I try to access the post code key which returns TypeError: expected string or buffer

r = requests.get('http://api.zippopotam.us/us/ma/belmont')
j = r.json()

data = json.loads(j)

print j['state']
print data['places']['latitude']

Full JSON output:

{
"country abbreviation": "US",
"places": [
    {
        "place name": "Belmont",
        "longitude": "-71.4594",
        "post code": "02178",
        "latitude": "42.4464"
    },
    {
        "place name": "Belmont",
        "longitude": "-71.2044",
        "post code": "02478",
        "latitude": "42.4128"
    }
],
"country": "United States",
"place name": "Belmont",
"state": "Massachusetts",
"state abbreviation": "MA"
}

Plop your JSON into [the tool in this snippet](https://stackoverflow.com/a/68460317/6243352), check 'brackets only', then click the node you want to copy its code path to the clipboard. — ggorlen, Jul 20 '21 at 22:19
The original question was essentially the result of a typo, but people who find this question later will be more interested in the linked duplicate. — Karl Knechtel, Jul 02 '22 at 01:03

score 116 · Answer 1 · edited Aug 09 '22 at 03:09

116

Places is a list and not a dictionary. This line below should therefore not work:

print(data['places']['latitude'])

You need to select one of the items in places and then you can list the place's properties. So to get the first post code you'd do:

print(data['places'][0]['post code'])

edited Aug 09 '22 at 03:09

larsaars

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answered Apr 26 '14 at 04:41

agrinh

1,835
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score 48 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 26 '14 at 04:40

I did not realize that the first nested element is actually an array. The correct way access to the post code key is as follows:

r = requests.get('http://api.zippopotam.us/us/ma/belmont')
j = r.json()

print j['state']
print j['places'][1]['post code']

score 14 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 28 '14 at 09:20

14

In your code j is Already json data and j['places'] is list not dict.

 r = requests.get('http://api.zippopotam.us/us/ma/belmont')
 j = r.json()

 print j['state']
 for each in j['places']:
    print each['latitude']

answered Apr 28 '14 at 09:20

MONTYHS

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score 8 · Answer 4 · edited Jun 20 '20 at 07:29

8

I'm using this lib to access nested dict keys

https://github.com/mewwts/addict

 import requests
 from addict import Dict
 r = requests.get('http://api.zippopotam.us/us/ma/belmont')
 j = Dict(r.json())

 print j.state
 print j.places[1]['post code']  # only work with keys without '-', space, or starting with number

edited Jun 20 '20 at 07:29

arielf

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answered Mar 30 '17 at 14:48

Ezequiel Bertti

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Python Accessing Nested JSON Data

4 Answers4

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