Question

I have this json file. Part of it is given below :

{ "has_more" : false,
  "items" : [ { "aliases" : [ "http://www.stackoverflow.com" ],
        "api_site_parameter" : "stackoverflow",
        "markdown_extensions" : [ "Prettify" ],
        "name" : "Stack Overflow",
        "related_sites" : [ { "name" : "Stack Overflow Chat",
              "relation" : "chat",
              "site_url" : "http://chat.stackoverflow.com"
            } ],
        "site_state" : "normal",
        "site_type" : "main_site",
        "site_url" : "http://stackoverflow.com",
        "styling" : { "link_color" : "#0077CC",
            "tag_background_color" : "#E0EAF1",
            "tag_foreground_color" : "#3E6D8E"
          }
      },
      { "api_site_parameter" : "serverfault",
        "markdown_extensions" : [ "Prettify" ],
        "name" : "Server Fault",
        "related_sites" : [ { "api_site_parameter" : "meta.serverfault",
              "name" : "Meta Server Fault",
              "relation" : "meta",
              "site_url" : "http://meta.serverfault.com"
            },
            { "name" : "Chat Stack Exchange",
              "relation" : "chat",
              "site_url" : "http://chat.stackexchange.com"
            }
          ],
        "site_state" : "normal",
        "site_type" : "main_site",
        "site_url" : "http://serverfault.com",
        "styling" : { "link_color" : "#10456A",

I want to match strings like

        "related_sites" : [ { "name" : "Stack Overflow Chat",
              "relation" : "chat",
              "site_url" : "http://chat.stackoverflow.com"
            } ],

and

        "related_sites" : [ { "api_site_parameter" : "meta.serverfault",
              "name" : "Meta Server Fault",
              "relation" : "meta",
              "site_url" : "http://meta.serverfault.com"
            },
            { "name" : "Chat Stack Exchange",
              "relation" : "chat",
              "site_url" : "http://chat.stackexchange.com"
            }
          ],

without enabling multiline. Any idea how to do that?

Answer 1

“Enabling multiline” is exactly how you match multiple lines. That’s why it’s called “multiline”. But since all it does is change . to include \n, you could just write (.|\n) instead.

But given that this is JSON, why on earth are you using a regex on it? Just parse it to a data structure and work from there.

data = json.loads(json_string)
for item in data['items']:
    print item['related_sites']