Question

I’m trying to export some API JSON data to a csv, but I only want some bits of it. I’ve tried row.append, but I’m getting the error TypeError: string indices must be integers.

I’m new to python, and a bit confused as to why it wants an integer.

import urllib2
import json
import csv

outfile_path='/NYTComments.csv'

writer = csv.writer(open(outfile_path, 'w'))

url = urllib2.Request('http://api.nytimes.com/svc/community/v2/comments/recent?api-key=ea7aac6c5d0723d7f1e06c8035d27305:5:66594855')

parsed_json = json.load(urllib2.urlopen(url))

print parsed_json

for comment in parsed_json['results']:
    row = []
    row.append(str(comment['commentSequence'].encode('utf-8')))
    row.append(str(comment['commentBody'].encode('utf-8')))
    row.append(str(comment['commentTitle'].encode('utf-8')))
    row.append(str(comment['approveDate'].encode('utf-8')))
    writer.writerow(row)

The parsed_json printed looks like this:

{u'status': u'OK',
u'results':
    {u'totalCommentsReturned': 25,
    u'comments':
        [{
            u'status': u'approved',
            u'sharing': 0,
            u'approveDate': u'1349378866',
            u'display_name': u'Seymour B Moore',
            u'userTitle': None,
            u'userURL': None,
            u'replies': [],
            u'parentID': None,
            u'articleURL': u'http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/03/thursday-matchup-cardinals-vs-rams/',
            u'location': u'SoCal',
            u'userComments': u'api.nytimes.com/svc/community/v2/comments/user/id/26434659.xml',
            u'commentSequence': 2,
            u'editorsSelection': 0,
            u'times_people': 1,
            u'email_status': u'0',
            u'commentBody': u"I know most people won't think this is a must watch game, but it will go a long way .... (truncated)",
            u'recommendationCount': 0,
            u'commentTitle': u'n/a'
        }]
    }
}

Answer 1

for comment in parsed_json['results']: #'comment' contains keys, not values

should be

for comment in parsed_json['results']['comments']:

parsed_json['results'] itself is another dictionary.

parsed_json['results']['comments'] is the list of dictionaries you want to iterate.