json.loads() is returning a unicode object instead of a dictionary
I'm reading in json from a file on a remote server using fabric:
from StringIO import StringIO
output = StringIO()
get(file_name, output)
output = output.getvalue()
The value of output is now:
'"{\\n \\"status\\": \\"failed\\", \\n \\"reason\\": \\"Record already
exists.\\"\\n}"'
When I try to parse this string to a dictionary using json.loads(output) its returns the unicode object u'{\n "status": "failed", \n "reason": "Record already exists."\n}' rather than a dictionary.
I've come up with a fairly bad fix, just passing the new unicode object back into json.loads():
json.loads(json.loads(output))
Is there any way other solution to this?
Cheers
Answer
Your data is escaped.
json.loads(output.decode('string-escape').strip('"'))
should give you desired results:
Out[12]: {'reason': 'Record already exists.', 'status': 'failed'}