We Keep Coding

Which serialization format is this?

I’m dealing with some serialized data fetched from an SQL Server database and that looks like this :
('|AFoo|BBaar|C61|DFoo Baar|E200060|F200523|G200240|', )
Any idea which format is this ? And is there any Python package that can deserilize this ?

What you show is a tuple that contains one value - a string. You can use string.split to construct a list of the string's component parts - i.e., AFoo, BBaar etc
t = ('|AFoo|BBaar|C61|DFoo Baar|E200060|F200523|G200240|', )
for e in t:
values = [v for v in e.split('|') if v]
print(values)
Output:
['AFoo', 'BBaar', 'C61', 'DFoo Baar', 'E200060', 'F200523', 'G200240']
Note:
The for loop is used as a generic approach that allows for multiple strings in the tuple. For the data fragment shown in the question, this isn't actually necessary

Process malformed JSON string in Python

I'm trying to process a log from Symphony using Pandas, but have some trouble with a malformed JSON which I can't parse.
An example of the log :
'{id:46025,
work_assignment:43313=>43313,
declaration:<p><strong>Bijkomende interventie.</strong></p>\r\n\r\n<p>H </p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong><em>Vaststellingen.</em></strong></p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong><em>CV. </em></strong>De.</p>=><p><strong>Bijkomende interventie.</strong></p>\r\n\r\n<p>He </p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong><em>Vaststellingen.</em></strong></p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong><em>CV. </em></strong>De.</p>,conclusions:<p>H </p>=><p>H </p>}'
What is the best way to process this?
For each part (id/work_assignment/declaration/etc) I would like to retrieve the old and new value (which are separated by "=>").

Use the following code:
def clean(my_log):
my_log.replace("{", "").replace("}", "") # Removes the unneeded { }
my_items = list(my_log.split(",")) # Split at the comma to get the pairs
my_dict = {}
for i in my_items:
key, value = i.split(":") # Split at the colon to separate the key and value
my_dict[key] = value # Add to the dictionary
return my_dict
Function returns a Python dictionary, which can then be converted to JSON using a serializer if needed, or directly used.
Hope I helped :D

extract a dictionary key value from a string

I am currently in the process of using python to transmit a python dictionary from one raspberry pi to another over a 433Mhz link, using virtual wire (vw.py) to send data.
The issue with vw.py is that data being sent is in string format.
I am successfully receiving the data on PI_no2, and now I am trying to reformat the data so it can be placed back in a dictionary.
I have created a small snippet to test with, and created a temporary string in the same format it is received as from vw.py
So far I have successfully split the string at the colon, and I am now trying to get rid of the double quotes, without much success.
my_status = {}
#temp is in the format the data is recieved
temp = "'mycode':['1','2','firstname','Lastname']"
key,value = temp.split(':')
print key
print value
key = key.replace("'",'')
value = value.replace("'",'')
my_status.update({key:value})
print my_status
Gives the result
'mycode'
['1','2','firstname','Lastname']
{'mycode': '[1,2,firstname,Lastname]'}
I require the value to be in the format
['1','2','firstname','Lastname']
but the strip gets rid of all the single speech marks.

You can use ast.literal_eval
import ast
temp = "'mycode':['1','2','firstname','Lastname']"
key,value = map(ast.literal_eval, temp.split(':'))
status = {key: value}
Will output
{'mycode': ['1', '2', 'firstname', 'Lastname']}

This shouldn't be hard to solve. What you need to do is strip away the [ ] in your list string, then split by ,. Once you've done this, iterate over the elements are add them to a list. Your code should look like this:
string = "[1,2,firstname,lastname]"
string = string.strip("[")
string = string.strip("]")
values = string.split(",")
final_list = []
for val in values:
final_list.append(val)
print final_list
This will return:
> ['1','2','firstname','lastname']
Then take this list and insert it into your dictionary:
d = {}
d['mycode'] = final_list
The advantage of this method is that you can handle each value independently. If you need to convert 1 and 2 to int then you'll be able to do that while leaving the other two as str.

Alternatively to cricket_007's suggestion of using a syntax tree parser - you're format is very similar to the standard yaml format. This is a pretty lightweight and intutive framework so I'll suggest it
a = "'mycode':['1','2','firstname','Lastname']"
print yaml.load(a.replace(":",": "))
# prints the dictionary {'mycode': ['1', '2', 'firstname', 'Lastname']}
The only thing that's different between your format and yaml is the colon needs a space
It also will distinguish between primitive data types for you, if that's important. Drop the quotes around 1 and 2 and it determines that they're numerical.
Tadhg McDonald-Jensen suggested pickling in the comments. This will allow you to store more complicated objects, though you may lose the human-readable format you've been experimenting with

how to create a dictionary from a set of properly formatted tuples in python

Is there a simple way to create a dictionary from a list of formatted tuples. e.g. if I do something like:
d={"responseStatus":"SUCCESS","sessionId":"01234","userId":2000004904}
This creates a dictionary called d. However, if I want to create a dictionary from a string which contains the same string, I can't do that
res=<some command that returns {"responseStatus":"SUCCESS","sessionId":"01234","userId":2000004904}>
print res
# returns {"responseStatus":"SUCCESS","sessionId":"01234","userId":2000004904}
d=dict(res)
This throws an error that says:
ValueError: dictionary update sequence element #0 has length 1; 2 is required

I strongly strongly suspect that you have json on your hands.
import json
d = json.loads('{"responseStatus":"SUCCESS","sessionId":"01234","userId":2000004904}')
would give you what you want.

Use dict(zip(tuples))
>>> u = ("foo", "bar")
>>> v = ("blah", "zoop")
>>> d = dict(zip(u, v))
>>> d
{'foo': 'blah', 'bar': 'zoop'}
Note, if you have an odd number of tuples this will not work.

Based on what you gave is, res is
# returns {"responseStatus":"SUCCESS","sessionId":"01234","userId":2000004904}
So the plan is to grab the string starting at the curly brace to the end and use json to decode it:
import json
# Discard the text before the curly brace
res = res[res.index('{'):]
# Turn that text into a dictionary
d = json.loads(res)

All you need to do in your particular case is
d = eval(res)
And please keep security in mind when using eval, especially if you're mixing it with ajax/json.
UPDATE
Since others pointed out you might be getting this data over the web and it isn't just a "how to make this work" question, use this:
import json
json.loads(res)

How can I parse a dictionary string?

I am trying to convert a string to a dictionary with dict function, like this
import json
p = "{'id':'12589456'}"
d = dict(p)
print d['id']
But I get the following error
ValueError: dictionary update sequence element #0 has length 1; 2 is required
Why does it fail? How can I fix this?

What you have is a string, but dict function can only iterate over tuples (key-value pairs) to construct a dictionary. See the examples given in the dict's documentation.
In this particular case, you can use ast.literal_eval to convert the string to the corresponding dict object, like this
>>> p = "{'id':'12589456'}"
>>> from ast import literal_eval
>>> d = literal_eval(p)
>>> d['id']
'12589456'

Since p is a string containing JSON (ish), you have to load it first to get back a Python dictionary. Then you can access items within it:
p = '{"id":"12589456"}'
d = json.loads(p)
print d["id"]
However, note that the value in p is not actually JSON; JSON demands (and the Python json module enforces) that strings are quoted with double-quotes, not single quotes. I've updated it in my example here, but depending on where you got your example from, you might have more to do.