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I can't get a value from a JSON API response in python

So I am struggling with getting a value from a JSON response. Looking in other post I have managed to write this code but when I try to search for the key (character_id) that I want in the dictionary python says that the key doesn't exist. My solution consists in getting the JSON object from the response, converting it into a string with json.dumps() and the converting it into a dictionary with json.loads(). Then I try to get 'character_id' from the dictionary but it doesn't exist. I am guessing it is related with the format of the dictionary but I have little to none experience in python. The code that makes the query and tries to get the values is this: (dataRequest is a fuction that makes the request and return the response from the api)
characterName = sys.argv[1];
response = dataRequest('http://census.daybreakgames.com/s:888/get/ps2:v2/character/?name.first_lower=' + characterName + '&c:show=character_id')
jsonString = json.dumps(response.json())
print(jsonString)
dic = json.loads(jsonString)
print(dic)
if 'character_id' in dic:
print(dic['character_id'])
The output of the code is:
{"character_list": [{"character_id": "5428662532301799649"}], "returned": 1}
{'character_list': [{'character_id': '5428662532301799649'}], 'returned': 1}

Welcome #Prieto! From what I can see, you probably don't need to serialize/de-serialize the JSON -- response.json() returns a python dictionary object already.
The issue is that you are looking for the 'character_id' key at the top-level of the dictionary, when it seems to be embedded inside another dictionary, that is inside a list. Try something like this:
#...omitted code
for char_obj in dic["character_list"]:
if "character_id" in char_obj:
print(char_obj["character_id"])

if your dic is like {"character_list": [{"character_id": "5428662532301799649"}], "returned": 1}
you get the value of character_id by
print(dic['character_list'][0][character_id])

The problem here is that you're trying to access a dictionary where the key is actually character_list.
What you need to do is to access the character_list value and iterate over or filter the character_id you want.
Like this:
print(jsonString)
dic = json.loads(jsonString)
print(dic)
character_information = dic['character_list'][0] # we access the character list and assume it is the first value
print(character_information["character_id"]) # this is your character id

The way I see it, the only hiccup with the code is this :
if 'character_id' in dic:
print(dic['character_id'])
The problem is that, the JSON file actually consists of actually 2 dictionaries , first is the main one, which has two keys, character_list and returned. There is a second sub-dictionary inside the array, which is the value for the key character_list.
So, what your code should actually look like is something like this:
for i in dic["character_list"]:
print(i["character_id"])
On a side-note, it will help to look at JSON file in this way :
{
"character_list": [
{
"character_id": "5428662532301799649"
}
],
"returned": 1
}
,where, elements enclosed in curly-brackets'{}' imply they are in a dictionary, whereas elements enclosed in curly-brackets'[]' imply they are in a list

Python3 - Parse list of strings inside nested json

Python Noob here. I saw many similar questions but none of it my exact use case. I have a simple nested json, and I'm trying to access the element name present inside metadata. Below is my sample json.
{
"items": [{
"metadata": {
"name": "myname1"
}
},
{
"metadata": {
"name": "myname1"
}
}
]
}
Below is the code That I have tried so far, but not successfull.
import json
f = open('./myfile.json')
x = f.read()
data = json.loads(x)
for i in data['items']:
for j in i['metadata']:
print (j['name'])
It errors out stating below
File "pythonjson.py", line 8, in
print (j['name']) TypeError: string indices must be integers
When I printed print (type(j)) I received the following o/p <class 'str'>. So I can see that it is a list of strings and not an dictinoary. So now How can I parse through a list of strings? Any official documentation or guide would be much helpful to know the concept of this.

Your json is bad, and the python exception is clear and unambiguous. You have the basic string "name" and you are trying to ... do a lookup on that?
Let's cut out all the json and look at the real issue. You do not know how to iterate over a dict. You're actually iterating over the keys themselves. If you want to see their values too, you're going to need dict.items()
https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/datastructures.html#looping-techniques
metadata = {"name": "myname1"}
for key, value in metadata.items():
if key == "name":
print ('the name is', value)
But why bother if you already know the key you want to look up?
This is literally why we have dict.
print ('the name is', metadata["name"])

You likely need:
import json
f = open('./myfile.json')
x = f.read()
data = json.loads(x)
for item in data['items']:
print(item["metadata"]["name"]
Your original JSON is not valid (colons missing).

to access contents of name use "i["metadata"].keys()" this will return all keys in "metadata".
Working code to access all values of the dictionary in "metadata".
for i in data['items']:
for j in i["metadata"].keys():
print (i["metadata"][j])
**update:**Working code to access contents of "name" only.
for i in data['items']:
print (i["metadata"]["name"])

Accessing Nested JSON [AWS Metadata] with Python

I'm using Lambda to run through my AWS account, returning a list of all instances. I need to be able to print out all of the 'VolumeId' values, but I can't work out how to access them as they are nested. I am able to print out the first VolumeId for each instance, however, some of the instances have several volumes, and some only have one. I think I know why I get these results, but I can't work out what to do to get all of them back.
Here's a snippet of what the JSON for one instance looks like:
{
'Groups':[],
'Instances':[
{
'AmiLaunchIndex':0,
'ImageId':'ami-0',
'InstanceId':'i-0123',
'InstanceType':'big',
'KeyName':'nonprod',
'LaunchTime':'date',
'Monitoring':{
'State':'disabled'
},
'Placement':{
'AvailabilityZone':'world',
'GroupName':'',
'Tenancy':'default'
},
'PrivateDnsName':'secret',
'PrivateIpAddress':'1.2.3.4',
'ProductCodes':[
],
'PublicDnsName':'',
'State':{
'Code':80,
'Name':'stopped'
},
'StateTransitionReason':'User initiated',
'SubnetId':'subnet-1',
'VpcId':'vpc-1',
'Architecture':'yes',
'BlockDeviceMappings':[
{
'DeviceName':'/sda',
'Ebs':{
'AttachTime':'date',
'DeleteOnTermination':True,
'Status':'attached',
'VolumeId':'vol-1'
}
},
{
'DeviceName':'/sdb',
'Ebs':{
'AttachTime':'date'),
'DeleteOnTermination':False,
'Status':'attached',
'VolumeId':'vol-2'
}
}
],
This is what I'm doing to get the first VolumeId:
ec2client = boto3.client('ec2')
ec2 = ec2client.describe_instances()
for reservation in ec2["Reservations"]:
for instance in reservation["Instances"]:
instanceid = instance["InstanceId"]
volumes = instance["BlockDeviceMappings"][0]["Ebs"]["VolumeId"]
print("The associated volume IDs for this instance are: ",(volumes))
I think the reason that I'm getting just the first ID is because I'm referencing the first element within "BlockDeviceMappings", but I can't work out how to get the other ones. If I try it without specifying the [0], I get the list indices must be integers or slices, not str error. I tried to use a dictionary instead of a list too, but felt like I was barking up the wrong tree with that one. Any suggestions/help would be appreciated!

One possible answer, not particularly pythonic
...
id_list = []
volumes_data = instance["BlockDeviceMappings"]
for element in volumes_data:
id_list.append(element["Ebs"]["VolumeId"])
Or else use json.loads and then iterate though json using .get syntax like the final answer in this

TypeError : Trouble accessing JSON metadata with Python

So I'm trying to access the following JSON data with python and when i give the statement :
print school['students']
The underlying data gets printed but what I really want to be able to do is print the 'id' value.
{ 'students':[
{
'termone':{
'english':'fifty',
'science':'hundred'
},
'id':'RA1081310005'
}
]
}
So when I do the following I get an error :
print school ['students']['id']
TypeError: list indices must be integers, not str
Can anyone suggest how i can access the ID & where I'm going wrong!

school['students'] is a list. You are trying to access the first element of that list and id key belongs to that element. Instead, try this:
school['students'][0]['id']
Out: 'RA1081310005'

The problem here is that in your list, 'id' is not a part of a dictionary, it is part of a list. To fix this, change your dictionary to the following:
school = {'students':{
'termone': {
"english": "fifty:,
"science": "hundred
},
"id":"RA1081310005"
}
}
Basically, you have a list, and there is no reason to have it, so I removed it.

how to parse json nested dict in python?

I'm trying to work with json file stored locally. That is formatted as below:
{
"all":{
"variables":{
"items":{
"item1":{
"one":{
"size":"1"
},
"two":{
"size":"2"
}
}
}
}
}
}
I'm trying to get the value of the size key using the following code.
with open('path/to/file.json','r') as file:
data = json.load(file)
itemParse(data["all"]["variables"]["items"]["item1"])
def itemParse(data):
for i in data:
# also tried for i in data.iterkeys():
# data has type dict while i has type unicode
print i.get('size')
# also tried print i['size']
got different errors and nothing seems to work. any suggestions?
also, tried using json.loads got error expect string or buffer

When you iterate over data you are getting the key only. There is 2 ways to solve it.
def itemParse(data):
for i, j in data.iteritems():
print j.get('size')
or
def itemParse(data):
for i in data:
print data[i].get('size')

First, use json.loads().
data = json.loads(open('path/to/file.json','r').read())
Second, your for loop should be changed to this
for k,v in data.iteritems():
print data[k]['size']
Regarding the error expect string or buffer, do you have permissions to read the json file?