Lessons2all-JSON and Python

JSON and using it in Python

Java Script Object Notation (JSON) is an easy to read and write data-interchange format
JSON is a lightweight format for storing and transporting data
JSON is often used for transfer of data in Client Server applications
JSON format is used for serializing and transmitting data over a network connection, for example, transmitting data between a server and web application
It's used by lots of APIs and Databases, and it's easy for both humans and machines to read
JSON represents objects as name/value pairs
JSON is used as an alternative to XML and it is easy for machines to parse and generate
Exchange of information encoded as JSON involves encoding and decoding steps

Syntax to be followed in JSON

Data is in name/value pairs
Data is separated by commas
Curly braces hold objects
Square brackets hold arrays

Example: person={"name":"Dr VP","langauges":["English","Kokani","Hindi","Kannada"]}

JSON libraries are available for many programming languages and systems like the following:

ActionScript
C
C++
C#
Cold Fusion
Java
Lisp
Perl
Objective-C
PHP
Python
Ruby etc.

JSON and Python

Since exchange of information encoded as JSON involves encoding and decoding steps
The python package for JSON provides function for encoding and decoding JSON
Python has a built-in package called JSON, which is used to work with JSON data. So you need to import json
If you have a Python object, you can convert it into a JSON object i.e. string by using the json.dumps() method
Similarly you can use json.loads() method to parse JSON object i.e. string which results in a dictionary

Program:

Output

One more program: In the following program json.dumps() is used directly in the print function and a string i.e. json object is passed as an argument to json.load() function which returns a dictionary and the values of the keys are displayed.