Parse a string into Dictionary

Question

I have a string which is of the form dictionary for sure. I need to parse it and store it as a dictionary in python.

What i have tried is this:

myObj={}
tmp=""
if ':' in line:
    key,value = line.split(':')
    key = key.strip('"')
    value = value.lstrip(' ').rstrip(',')
    if value == '{':
        tmp += key + '.'
    if value == '}':
        tmp = ''
    if(value!="{"):
        myObj[tmp + key] = value

Reading Line by Line and parsing it. But I am facing problems with different kind of formats.

For E.G.

        {
        "id": 1,
        "name": "Foo",
        "price": 123,
        "tags": [ "Bar", "Eek" ],
        "stock": {
            "warehouse": 300,
            "retail": 20
        }
    }

No use of eval or any built in function or library like json. Can I use regex here? How do I do this?

Why *"No use of `eval` or any built in function or library"*? — jonrsharpe, Jun 22 '14 at 10:20
Really, you are *explicitly excluding the provided library*? Note that `re` *is a library too*. You'll need to tell us **why** you have such arbitrary restrictions. — Martijn Pieters, Jun 22 '14 at 10:21
You can't parse JSON with regex - it's [not a regular language](http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/3987/is-json-a-regular-language). — jonrsharpe, Jun 22 '14 at 10:22
Then tell us what you have tried so far; writing a parser is not a trivial task. — Martijn Pieters, Jun 22 '14 at 10:22
possible duplicate of [Parsing values from a JSON file in Python](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2835559/parsing-values-from-a-json-file-in-python) — Christian Berendt, Jun 22 '14 at 10:26

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 22 '14 at 10:19

2

You have JSON data, use the json library to parse it:

import json

data = json.loads(yourstring)

Python comes with batteries included, don't reinvent the wheel.

answered Jun 22 '14 at 10:19

Martijn Pieters

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Parse a string into Dictionary

1 Answers1