Accessing nested JSON elements in Python

Question

New to Python and I'm not sure im encoding my request as JSON properly. I am trying to be able to access specific elements within the JSON. This is what I have:

import requests
import json

url = "sample.com"
access_token "xxxxx"

headers = {
    'authorization': access_token,
    'cache-control': "no-cache"
    }

response = requests.request("GET", url, headers=headers)

jsonvar = response.json()
print(jsonvar)

This gives me:

{u'sleep': 
     [{u'logId': 11208762595, 
       u'dateOfSleep': u'2016-03-23', 
       u'isMainSleep': True, 
       u'startTime': u'2016-03-22T23:43:30.000', 
       u'restlessCount': 7, 
       u'duration': 12540000, 
       u'restlessDuration': 13, 
       u'minuteData': [{u'value': u'2', u'dateTime': u'23:43:30'}, 
                       {u'value': u'1', u'dateTime': u'23:44:30'}],                         
       u'awakeCount': 1, 
       u'minutesAfterWakeup': 0}], 
 u'summary': 
      {u'totalTimeInBed': 418, 
       u'totalMinutesAsleep': 395, 
       u'totalSleepRecords': 2}}

I've altered the output in an attempt to make it more readable. Anyways I would like to assign specific element values to variables such as isMainSleep etc.

I've tried something like this:

myvar = jsonvar['isMainSleep']

I was able to get this to work in a different situation but none of the data was nested which seems to be the difference here.

isMainSleep is in a dictionary nested inside a list nested inside another dictionary. You want jsonvar[u'sleep'][0][u'isMainSleep']. Notice the u in front because these are unicode strings and the [0] because it's the first item in the list. You might want to add some error checking. — solarc
– solarc, Commented Mar 28, 2016 at 21:21
@solarc your suggestion worked! However because its just a comment I can't accept it as the answer. Is there a better way to output this data so its actually in JSON format? — Ryan Litwiller
– Ryan Litwiller, Commented Mar 28, 2016 at 21:26

DevShark · Accepted Answer · 2016-03-28 21:29:05Z

5

You simply need to access each dictionary along the way. Like this:

myvar = jsonvar['sleep'][0]['isMainSleep']

You access the list associated with the key sleep, then its first element, which is a dictionary. Finally the value associated with the key isMainSleep.

Note that you do not need to add the prefix 'u' in front of your keys.

In answer to your comment, you could output this as a json like this:

print json.dumps(myvar)

edited Mar 28, 2016 at 21:29

answered Mar 28, 2016 at 21:23

DevShark

9,18810 gold badges36 silver badges68 bronze badges

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

Comments

ashishsingal · Accepted Answer · 2016-03-28 21:23:11Z

1

You have a nested list and dictionary here, and the top level keys are sleep and summary. So try myvar = jsonvar['sleep'][0]['isMainSleep'].

answered Mar 28, 2016 at 21:23

ashishsingal

2,9883 gold badges20 silver badges27 bronze badges

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Accessing nested JSON elements in Python

2 Answers 2

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

2 Answers 2

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related