Convert JSON string to dict using Python

Question

I'm a little bit confused with JSON in Python. To me, it seems like a dictionary, and for that reason I'm trying to do that:

{
    "glossary":
    {
        "title": "example glossary",
        "GlossDiv":
        {
            "title": "S",
            "GlossList":
            {
                "GlossEntry":
                {
                    "ID": "SGML",
                    "SortAs": "SGML",
                    "GlossTerm": "Standard Generalized Markup Language",
                    "Acronym": "SGML",
                    "Abbrev": "ISO 8879:1986",
                    "GlossDef":
                    {
                        "para": "A meta-markup language, used to create markup languages such as DocBook.",
                        "GlossSeeAlso": ["GML", "XML"]
                    },
                    "GlossSee": "markup"
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

But when I do print dict(json), it gives an error.

How can I transform this string into a structure and then call json["title"] to obtain "example glossary"?

Answer 1

json.loads()

import json

d = json.loads(j)
print d['glossary']['title']

Answer 2

When I started using json, I was confused and unable to figure it out for some time, but finally I got what I wanted
Here is the simple solution

import json
m = {'id': 2, 'name': 'hussain'}
n = json.dumps(m)
o = json.loads(n)
print(o['id'], o['name'])

Answer 3

use simplejson or cjson for speedups

import simplejson as json

json.loads(obj)

or 

cjson.decode(obj)

Answer 4

If you trust the data source, you can use eval to convert your string into a dictionary:

eval(your_json_format_string)

Example:

>>> x = "{'a' : 1, 'b' : True, 'c' : 'C'}"
>>> y = eval(x)

>>> print x
{'a' : 1, 'b' : True, 'c' : 'C'}
>>> print y
{'a': 1, 'c': 'C', 'b': True}

>>> print type(x), type(y)
<type 'str'> <type 'dict'>

>>> print y['a'], type(y['a'])
1 <type 'int'>

>>> print y['a'], type(y['b'])
1 <type 'bool'>

>>> print y['a'], type(y['c'])
1 <type 'str'>