How we convert string into json

Question

I want to convert ansible-init file into json. So, I just use this code: common_shared file:

 [sql]
 x.com
 [yps_db]
 y.com
 [ems_db]
 c.com
 [scc_db]
 d.com

 [all:vars]
 server_url="http://x.com/x"
 app_host=abc.com
 server_url="https://x.com"

 [haproxy]
 1.1.1.1    manual_hostname=abc instance_id=i-dddd
 2.2.2.2     manual_hostname=xyz instance_id=i-cccc

For converting Ansible INI file in JSON:

 import json

 options= {} 
 f = open('common_shared')
 x = f.read()
 config_entries = x.split()
 for key,value in zip(config_entries[0::2], config_entries[1::2]):
  cleaned_key = key.replace("[",'').replace("]",'')
  options[cleaned_key]=value

  print json.dumps(options,indent=4,ensure_ascii=False)

But it will print this result:

{
"scc_db": "xxx", 
"haproxy": "x.x.x.x", 
"manual_hostname=xxx": "instance_id=xx", 
"ems_db": "xxx", 
"yps_db": "xxx", 
"all:vars": "yps_server_url=\"xxx\"", 
"1.1.1.5": "manual_hostname=xxx", 
"sql": "xxx", 
"xxx": "scc_server_url=xxxx\""
}

But I wanted to print result in proper JSON format but not able to understand how. I tried config parser but didn't get help to print it in desired format.

You haven't done anything to parse this file in order to convert it. What, exactly, would the correct "JSON format" be? — Daniel Roseman, Nov 04 '15 at 09:41
Possible duplicate of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19078170/python-how-would-you-save-a-simple-settings-config-file — Jan, Nov 04 '15 at 09:47
I have updated my question and inventory file format. Please help in this — kohi, Nov 04 '15 at 14:42
Thank you for your valuable input. But I found some new way to get all inventory json result using ansible. I will ask it into other distro — kohi, Nov 05 '15 at 05:35

Christian Witts · Answer 1 · 2015-11-04T16:52:39.047

You can use ConfigParser to read in your file, and then do the conversion to a dict to dump.

from ConfigParser import ConfigParser
from collections import defaultdict

config = ConfigParser()
config.readfp(open('/path/to/file.ini'))

def convert_to_dict(config):
    config_dict = defaultdict(dict)
    for section in config.sections():
        for key, value in config.items(section):
            config_dict[section][key] = value

    return config_dict

print convert_to_dict(config)

EDIT

As you stated in your comment, some line items are just 'things' with no value, the below might work for you.

import re
from collections import defaultdict

SECTION_HEADER_RE = re.compile('^\[.*\]$')
KEY_VALUE_RE = re.compile('^.*=.*$')

def convert_ansible_to_dict(filepath_and_name):
    ansible_dict = defaultdict(dict)
    with open(filepath_and_name) as input_file:
        section_header = None
        for line in input_file:
            if SECTION_HEADER_RE.findall(line.strip()):
                section_header = SECTION_HEADER_RE.findall(line.strip())[0]
            elif KEY_VALUE_RE.findall(line.strip()):
                if section_header:
                    # Make sure you have had a header section prior to the line
                    key, value = KEY_VALUE_RE.findall(line.strip())[0].split('=', 1)
                    ansible_dict[section_header][key] = value
            else:
                if line.strip() and section_header:
                    # As they're just attributes without value, assign the value None
                    ansible_dict[section_header][line.strip()] = None

    return ansible_dict

This is a naive approach, and might not catch all corner cases for you, but perhaps it's a step in the right direction. If you have any 'bare-attributes' prior to your first section header, they will not be included in the dictionary as it would not know where to apportion it to, and the regex for key=value pairs is working on the assumption that there will be only 1 equals sign in the line. I'm sure there might be many other cases I'm not seeing right now, but hopefully this helps.

Getting this error : ConfigParser.ParsingError: File contains parsing errors: — kohi, Nov 04 '15 at 09:55
Does your config file only contains section headers, and then single lines of information and not `thing = value` pairs ? — Christian Witts, Nov 04 '15 at 09:57
yes but some value contains thing=value and some contains single line of information — kohi, Nov 04 '15 at 10:15
I've added an edit for using regular expressions to parse through your file line-by-line and apportion items to sections. Hope it helps. — Christian Witts, Nov 04 '15 at 13:01
This error File "json_convert.py", line 21, in convert_ansible_to_dict key, value = KEY_VALUE_RE.findall(line.strip())[0].split('=') ValueError: too many values to unpack — kohi, Nov 04 '15 at 15:15
Changing the `.split('=')` to `.split('=', 1)` will ensure there will be at most 1 key|value pair. — Christian Witts, Nov 04 '15 at 16:53
Let us [continue this discussion in chat](http://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/94232/discussion-between-christian-witts-and-kohi). — Christian Witts, Nov 04 '15 at 18:19
For python3, we need to use `from configparser import ConfigParser`. Also `readfp()` method is deprecated, now we need to use `config.read_file()` instead. Everything else works fine for me on Python 3.6. — jdhao, Jan 30 '21 at 06:35

Jonathan Miller · Answer 2 · 2015-11-04T10:33:09.613

0

Christian's answer is the correct one: Use ConfigParser. Your issue with his solution is that you have an incorrectly formatted INI file.

You need to change all your properties to:

key=value
key: value

e.g.
[sql]
aaaaaaa: true

https://wiki.python.org/moin/ConfigParserExamples

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INI_file#Keys_.28properties.29

edited Nov 04 '15 at 10:33

answered Nov 04 '15 at 10:27

Jonathan Miller

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How we convert string into json

2 Answers2