How to parse JSON in Python
Use json.loads(text) for a string, json.load(file) for a file object. Both return the parsed Python object (dict, list, str, int, etc.).
import json
text = '{"name": "Alice", "age": 30, "skills": ["python"]}'
data = json.loads(text)
print(data["name"]) # 'Alice'
print(data["skills"][0]) # 'python'json.loads takes a str (or bytes) and returns whatever the JSON's top-level type maps to: a JSON object becomes a Python dict, an array becomes a list, a string becomes str, etc. The reverse is json.dumps(obj) which serialises a Python value back to a JSON string.
When the JSON is stored in a file, use json.load(file) — same behaviour, but takes a file-like object instead of a string. Always open the file with encoding='utf-8' since JSON is spec'd as UTF-8.
For 3x-10x speed on large payloads or high-QPS servers, drop-in-replace json with orjson (pip install orjson).
Variations
Load from a file
with open("data.json", encoding="utf-8") as f:
data = json.load(f)json.load takes the file object, not its path.
Handle a parse error
try:
data = json.loads(text)
except json.JSONDecodeError as e:
print("bad json at", e.pos)e.pos, e.lineno, e.colno pinpoint the exact byte.
Fast JSON via orjson
import orjson
data = orjson.loads(text)Same API, 3-10x faster. Returns bytes from dumps() — decode() if you need str.
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