How to Get String Objects Instead of Unicode from JSON in Python 2?

Getting String Objects Instead of Unicode from JSON (Python 2)

When parsing JSON from ASCII-encoded text files in Python 2, the default behavior is to represent string values as Unicode objects. This can pose a problem when working with libraries that only accept string objects.

Fortunately, there are several ways to obtain string objects instead of Unicode objects:

Using PyYAML

PyYAML is a Python library for parsing YAML, which is a superset of JSON. It provides a convenient way to get string objects while preserving the JSON structure:

<code class="python">import yaml

json_string = '["a", "b"]'
data = yaml.safe_load(json_string)  # Returns a list of strings</code>

Note: This method only works for ASCII-encoded data.

Converting Unicode to String Objects

If the data is Unicode-encoded, you can use a conversion function to convert the Unicode strings to regular strings:

<code class="python">def unicode_to_string(obj):
    if isinstance(obj, basestring):
        return obj.encode('utf-8')
    elif isinstance(obj, dict):
        return dict((unicode_to_string(k), unicode_to_string(v)) for k, v in obj.iteritems())
    elif isinstance(obj, list):
        return [unicode_to_string(v) for v in obj]
    else:
        return obj

# Usage:
json_string = '["\u00e1", "\u00e9"]'
data = json.loads(json_string)
converted_data = unicode_to_string(data)  # Converts Unicode strings to strings</code>

Using an Object Hook

You can also use an object hook to convert Unicode strings to strings during serialization:

<code class="python">import json

def object_hook(obj):
    if isinstance(obj, unicode):
        return obj.encode('utf-8')
    return obj

# Usage:
json_string = '["a", "b"]'
data = json.loads(json_string, object_hook=object_hook)  # Converts Unicode strings to strings during deserialization</code>

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