How to iterate over this embedded JSON "list" in python?

Question

New to python here. I'm trying to iterate over all the JSON "group" objects for each person but having some difficulty. This is only a partial list (not all users have groups) so I need to use the try/catch block so users without a list of groups don't cause early termination.

The JSON data snippet:

{
"people": [
   {

      "person": {
         "name": "joe",
         "email": "[email protected]",

         "groups": [
            {
               "name": "office",
               "id": 23
            },

            {
               "name": "mfg",
               "id": 93
            } ]
      },


      "person": {
         "name": "bill",
         "email": "[email protected]",

         "groups": [
            {
               "name": "acctg",
               "id": 133
            },

            {
               "name": "mgr",
               "id": 207
            } ]
      } 
   }
]

}

This is my code so far:

jdata = json.loads...
for person in jdata['people']:
   for key, val in person.iteritems():
      print "key ", key , " is ", val

      print val["name"]
      print val["email"]

      try:
         for gkey, gval in val["groups"][0].iteritems():
            print "gval: " + gval
      except:
         foo=1

Notice I can print out a list of the 0th item in the group list by doing the for gkey...val["groups"][0].iteritems() but what I really want is iterate over all the group lists of each person entry (some people belong to two groups, others 10 or more) so there is no fixed length. How can I do this?

Use a for loop on val["groups"]. Or is that not what you want? — syntonym
– syntonym, Commented Apr 5, 2016 at 15:35
Instead of try/except, you can say val.get("groups", []) and the iterate over that. If that person doesn't have groups it will return an empty list. — Brian Schlenker
– Brian Schlenker, Commented Apr 5, 2016 at 15:45

Iron Fist · Accepted Answer · 2016-04-05 15:46:36Z

1

Is that what you want? :

>>> for group in j['people'][0]['person']['groups']:
        for k,v in group.items():
            print(k,v)


name acctg
id 133
name mgr
id 207

Or more generally:

>>> for person in j['people']:
        for group in person['person']['groups']:
            print('Name : {} --- ID: {}'.format(group['name'], group['id']))


Name : acctg --- ID: 133
Name : mgr --- ID: 207

answered Apr 5, 2016 at 15:46

Iron Fist

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1 Comment

Koko Over a year ago

Thanks! The second example you show is just what I needed. whew!

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