Python urllib2: Receive JSON response from url

python json urllib2
Deepak B picture Deepak B · Dec 17, 2012 · Viewed 160.9k times · Source

I am trying to GET a URL using Python and the response is JSON. However, when I run

import urllib2
response = urllib2.urlopen('https://api.instagram.com/v1/tags/pizza/media/XXXXXX')
html=response.read()
print html

The html is of type str and I am expecting a JSON. Is there any way I can capture the response as JSON or a python dictionary instead of a str.

Answer

Martijn Pieters picture Martijn Pieters · Dec 17, 2012

If the URL is returning valid JSON-encoded data, use the json library to decode that:

import urllib2
import json

response = urllib2.urlopen('https://api.instagram.com/v1/tags/pizza/media/XXXXXX')
data = json.load(response)   
print data

Related questions

urllib2 and json

can anyone point out a tutorial that shows me how to do a POST request using urllib2 with the data being in JSON format?

Read More
Get json data via url and use in python (simplejson)

I imagine this must have a simple answer, but I am struggling: I want to take a url (which outputs json) and get the data in a usable dictionary in python. I am stuck on the last step. >>&…

Read More
Python Requests: Post JSON and file in single request

I need to do a API call to upload a file along with a JSON string with details about the file. I am trying to use the python requests lib to do this: import requests info = { 'var1' : 'this', 'var2…

Read More