python json loads error (expecting property name)

Question

I am trying to return a specific field from a json result. Here is what I am trying to do with it:

rjson = json.loads("{u'tv_season_results': [], u'tv_episode_results': [], u'person_results': [], u'tv_results': [], u'movie_results': [{u'poster_path': u'/5SjtNPD1bb182vzQccvEUpXHFjN.jpg', u'title': u'(500) Days of Summer', u'overview': u'Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), greeting-card writer and hopeless romantic, is caught completely off-guard when his girlfriend, Summer (Zooey Deschanel), suddenly dumps him. He reflects on their 500 days together to try to figure out where their love affair went sour, and in doing so, Tom rediscovers his true passions in life.', u'release_date': u'2009-07-17', u'popularity': 3.598717, u'original_title': u'(500) Days of Summer', u'backdrop_path': u'/yYw9cVdRJ4zzwxM2cTDXfT6JI6E.jpg', u'vote_count': 1239, u'video': False, u'adult': False, u'vote_average': 7.3, u'genre_ids': [35, 18, 10749], u'id': 19913, u'original_language': u'en'}]}")

however, I get the following error when running it:

ValueError: Expecting property name: line 1 column 2 (char 1)

EDIT:

Here is the full program (minus the API key):

import requests, json
r = requests.get('https://api.themoviedb.org/3/find/'+'tt1022603'+'?api_key=###&external_source=imdb_id')
print str(r.json())
rjson = json.loads("{u'tv_season_results': [], u'tv_episode_results': [], u'person_results': [], u'tv_results': [], u'movie_results': [{u'poster_path': u'/5SjtNPD1bb182vzQccvEUpXHFjN.jpg', u'title': u'(500) Days of Summer', u'overview': u'Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), greeting-card writer and hopeless romantic, is caught completely off-guard when his girlfriend, Summer (Zooey Deschanel), suddenly dumps him. He reflects on their 500 days together to try to figure out where their love affair went sour, and in doing so, Tom rediscovers his true passions in life.', u'release_date': u'2009-07-17', u'popularity': 3.598717, u'original_title': u'(500) Days of Summer', u'backdrop_path': u'/yYw9cVdRJ4zzwxM2cTDXfT6JI6E.jpg', u'vote_count': 1239, u'video': False, u'adult': False, u'vote_average': 7.3, u'genre_ids': [35, 18, 10749], u'id': 19913, u'original_language': u'en'}]}")

where I do the loads() I just put the print from the line above.

You don't have a JSON string. You have Python repr() output for a dictionary. — Martijn Pieters
– Martijn Pieters, Commented Feb 18, 2016 at 16:23
Do you generate that string or do you receive it as program input? If you generate it, can you show us how you did it? — Robᵩ
– Robᵩ, Commented Feb 18, 2016 at 16:25
Sure, it is through the tmdb api. I can post what I have so far. — rjbogz
– rjbogz, Commented Feb 18, 2016 at 16:27
r.json() already returns a parsed Python dict. There is no need to call json.loads() on it again. — Daniel Roseman
– Daniel Roseman, Commented Feb 18, 2016 at 16:33

alecxe · Accepted Answer · 2016-02-18 16:23:53Z

1

This is not a valid JSON you are trying to load. It looks more like a string representation of the dictionary. If you cannot change the input data to be a valid JSON, load it via ast.literal_eval() which would eval the string safely:

>>> from ast import literal_eval
>>>
>>> s = "{u'tv_season_results': [], u'tv_episode_results': [], u'person_results': [], u'tv_results': [], u'movie_results': [{u'poster_path': u'/5SjtNPD1bb182vzQccvEUpXHFjN.jpg', u'title': u'(500) Days of Summer', u'overview': u'Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), greeting-card writer and hopeless romantic, is caught completely off-guard when his girlfriend, Summer (Zooey Deschanel), suddenly dumps him. He reflects on their 500 days together to try to figure out where their love affair went sour, and in doing so, Tom rediscovers his true passions in life.', u'release_date': u'2009-07-17', u'popularity': 3.598717, u'original_title': u'(500) Days of Summer', u'backdrop_path': u'/yYw9cVdRJ4zzwxM2cTDXfT6JI6E.jpg', u'vote_count': 1239, u'video': False, u'adult': False, u'vote_average': 7.3, u'genre_ids': [35, 18, 10749], u'id': 19913, u'original_language': u'en'}]}"
>>> d = literal_eval(s)  # d is a dictionary
>>> d["movie_results"][0]["id"]
19913

answered Feb 18, 2016 at 16:23

alecxe

476k127 gold badges1.1k silver badges1.2k bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

1 Comment

rjbogz Over a year ago

Thanks. I didn't even realize what I was looking at.

timgeb · Accepted Answer · 2016-02-18 16:25:11Z

1

That's because your string is not valid JSON, but a python dictionary as a string. What you want is ast.literal_eval.

>>> from ast import literal_eval
>>> literal_eval("{u'tv_season_results': [], u'tv_episode_results': [], u'person_results': [], u'tv_results': [], u'movie_results': [{u'poster_path': u'/5SjtNPD1bb182vzQccvEUpXHFjN.jpg', u'title': u'(500) Days of Summer', u'overview': u'Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), greeting-card writer and hopeless romantic, is caught completely off-guard when his girlfriend, Summer (Zooey Deschanel), suddenly dumps him. He reflects on their 500 days together to try to figure out where their love affair went sour, and in doing so, Tom rediscovers his true passions in life.', u'release_date': u'2009-07-17', u'popularity': 3.598717, u'original_title': u'(500) Days of Summer', u'backdrop_path': u'/yYw9cVdRJ4zzwxM2cTDXfT6JI6E.jpg', u'vote_count': 1239, u'video': False, u'adult': False, u'vote_average': 7.3, u'genre_ids': [35, 18, 10749], u'id': 19913, u'original_language': u'en'}]}")
{u'tv_season_results': [], u'tv_episode_results': [], u'person_results': [], u'tv_results': [], u'movie_results': [{u'poster_path': u'/5SjtNPD1bb182vzQccvEUpXHFjN.jpg', u'title': u'(500) Days of Summer', u'overview': u'Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), greeting-card writer and hopeless romantic, is caught completely off-guard when his girlfriend, Summer (Zooey Deschanel), suddenly dumps him. He reflects on their 500 days together to try to figure out where their love affair went sour, and in doing so, Tom rediscovers his true passions in life.', u'release_date': u'2009-07-17', u'popularity': 3.598717, u'original_title': u'(500) Days of Summer', u'id': 19913, u'vote_count': 1239, u'video': False, u'adult': False, u'vote_average': 7.3, u'original_language': u'en', u'backdrop_path': u'/yYw9cVdRJ4zzwxM2cTDXfT6JI6E.jpg', u'genre_ids': [35, 18, 10749]}]}

answered Feb 18, 2016 at 16:25

timgeb

79.2k20 gold badges129 silver badges150 bronze badges

2 Comments

Martijn Pieters Over a year ago

What they want is to fix whatever produced that output.

timgeb Over a year ago

@MartijnPieters alright, substitute "want" with "can do for now", because we have no idea how OP is getting his string.

Daniel Roseman · Accepted Answer · 2016-02-18 16:37:24Z

0

The json() method of the response parses the JSON for you and returns a JSON object. You can access that directly, and there is no need to try and parse it again.

r = requests.get('https://api.themoviedb.org/3/find/'+'tt1022603'+'?api_key=###&external_source=imdb_id')
data = r.json()
print data['tv_season_results']

answered Feb 18, 2016 at 16:37

Daniel Roseman

602k68 gold badges911 silver badges924 bronze badges

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

python json loads error (expecting property name)

3 Answers 3

1 Comment

2 Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

3 Answers 3

1 Comment

2 Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related