Question

I’m using Yahoo Placemaker API which gives different structure of json depending on input.
Simple json file looks like this:

{
   'document':{
        'itemDetails':{
            'id'='0'
            'prop1':'1',
            'prop2':'2'
         }
        'other':{
            'propA':'A',
            'propB':'B'
        }
    }
}

When I want to access itemDetails I simply write json_file[‘document’][‘itemDetails’].

But when I get more complicated response, such as

{
   'document':{
      '1':{
         'itemDetails':{
            'id'='1'
            'prop1':'1',
            'prop2':'2'
         }
      },
      '0':{
         'itemDetails':{
            'id'='0'
            'prop1':'1',
            'prop2':'2'
         },
      '2':{
         'itemDetails':{
            'id'='1'
            'prop1':'1',
            'prop2':'2'
         }
        'other':{
            'propA':'A',
            'propB':'B'
        }
    }
}

the solution obviously does not work.

I use id, prop1 and prop2 to create objects.

What would be the best approach to automatically access itemDetails in the second case without writing json_file[‘document’][‘0’][‘itemDetails’] ?

Answer 1

If I understand correctly, you want to loop through all of json_file['document']['0']['itemDetails'], json_file['document']['1']['itemDetails'], …

If that’s the case, then:

item_details = {}
for key, value in json_file['document']:
    item_details[key] = value['itemDetails']

Or, a one-liner:

item_details = {k: v['itemDetails'] for k, v in json_file['document']}

Then, you would access them as item_details['0'], item_details['1'], …

Note: You can suppress the single quotes around 0 and 1, by using int(key) or int(k).

Edit:
If you want to access both cases seamlessly (whether there is one result or many), you could check:

if 'itemDetails' in json_file['document']:
    item_details = {'0': json_file['document']['itemDetails']}
else:
    item_details = {k: v['itemDetails'] for k, v in json_file['document'] if k != 'other'}

Then loop through the item_details dict.