Creating a nested JSON request with Python

Question

A user needs to pass a json object as a part of the request. It would look something like this:

   {"token" :"ayaljltja",
   "addresses": [
      {'name':'Home','address':'20 Main Street', 
       'city':'new-york'}, 
      {'name':'work', 'address':'x Street', 'city':'ohio'}
   ]}

I have two problems right now. First, I can't figure out how to test this code by recreating the nested POST. I can successfully POST a dict but posting the list of addresses within the JSON object is messing me up.

Simply using cURL, how might I do this? How might I do it with urrlib2?

My second issue is then deserializing the JSON POST object on the server side. I guess I just need to see a successful POST to determine the input (and then deserialize it with the json module).

Any tips?

JeremyP · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-27 15:11:59Z

2

First make sure your JSON is valid. Paste it into the JSONLint web page.

Currently your JSON has two issues:

there is no comma between "token" :"ayaljltja" and "addresses": [...]
a single quote is not a valid way of delimiting a JSON string, replace them all with double quotes.

answered Sep 27, 2011 at 15:11

JeremyP

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1 Comment

Ben Over a year ago

Hey Jeremy, thanks. My json is actually valid in real life. Just a typo in SO. When I look at the Request Object, the issue is that the "addresses" object looks like the following: [u"{'city': 'new-york', 'name': 'Home', 'display_value': '2 Main Street'}", u"{'city': 'new-york', 'name': 'Home', 'display_value': '2 Main Street'}"]. I don't know why i'm getting unicode objects in my list. When I try to serialize those objects, the serializer fails (because of the single quotes, I believe).

Ian · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-27 13:53:10Z

2

With command line curl, save your JSON to a file, say data.json. Then try: curl -X POST -d @data.json http://your.service.url

It's also possible to enter the JSON directly to the -d parameter but (as it sounds like you know already) you have to get your quoting and escaping exactly correct.

answered Sep 27, 2011 at 13:53

Ian

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2 Comments

Ben Over a year ago

Hey Ian, I was afraid of something like that. Quoting/escaping is a pain that I'm aware of here. Any thoughts on using urllib2 or urllib to save me from some of this annoyance? I couldn't figure it out with urlencode.

Ian Over a year ago

stackoverflow.com/questions/4348061/… looks like it covers what you're trying to do.

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