Parsing JSON nested Dictionary using Python

To understand how your json is set up, it's easier to break it down. Let's look at the first dictionary's keys, and remove the values.

json = {"items": [], "links": {}}

You have a dictionary with two keys and two values. All three of the variables you are looking for (id, self, name) are in the first key, "items". So let's dive deeper.

json["items"] = [{'links': {'self': 'https://www.google.com'}, 'name': 'beast', 'type': 'Device', 'id': '12345'}]

Now you have a list containing a dictionary with the values you are looking for, so let's enter the first and only value of the list containing the next dictionary.

json["items"][0] = {'links': {'self': 'https://www.google.com'}, 'id': '12345', 'type': 'Device', 'name': 'beast'}

Finally we have the dictionary with the values are looking for, so you can use this code to find name and id.

json["items"][0]["name"] = beast

json["items"][0]["id"] = 12345

The self variable is hidden one dictionary deeper so we have to delve into the links key.

json["items"][0]["links"]["self"] = http://google.com

Now you have all of your values, you just need to follow through all the lists and dictionaries to get the value you want.

You can write a function, that will get the values you need:

def dict_get(x,key,here=None):    x = x.copy()    if here is None: here = []    if x.get(key):          here.append(x.get(key))        x.pop(key)    else:        for i,j in x.items():          if  isinstance(x[i],list): dict_get(x[i][0],key,here)          if  isinstance(x[i],dict): dict_get(x[i],key,here)    return heredict_get(a,'id') ['12345']dict_get(a,'self') ['https://www.google.com', 'https://www.google.com']dict_get(a,'name')['beast']

You can as well call any key that you want:

data

a = {  "items": [    {      "id": "12345",      "links": {        "self": "https://www.google.com"      },      "name": "beast",      "type": "Device"    }  ],  "links": {    "self": "https://www.google.com"  },  "paging": {    "count": 1,    "limit": 1,    "offset": 0,    "pages": 1  }}

Your json basically contains lists inside it. Jsons are accessed as key value pairs and lists are accessed using indexes.

json_object['items'][0]['id']

The above statement should give you the id. We are accessing the key items, which contains a list. We have [0] because this list contains only one element (which is again a key value pair).

The same approach is followed for self and name

json_object['links']['self']json_object['items'][0]['links']['self']json_object['items'][0]['name']

The difference between accessing the two different 'self' bring that one is enclosed in a list hence we need to get into the list and the other one is a dictionary with key 'self' which is inside a dictionary 'links'