python - Parse multiple json objects that are in one line

Question

I'm parsing files that containt json objects. The problem is that some files have multiple objects in one line. e.g.:

{"data1": {"data1_inside": "bla{bl"a"}}{"data1": {"data1_inside": "blabla["}}{"data1": {"data1_inside": "bla{bla"}}{"data1": {"data1_inside": "bla["}}

I've made a function that tries parsing a substring when there are no open brackets left, but there may be curly brackets in values. I've tried skipping values with checking the start and end of quotes, but there are also values with escaped quotes. Any ideas on how to deal with this?

My attempt:

def get_lines(data):
    lines = []
    open_brackets = 0
    start = 0
    is_comment = False
    for index, c in enumerate(data):
        if c == '"':
            is_comment = not is_comment
        elif not is_comment:
            if c == '{':
                if not open_brackets:
                    start = index
                open_brackets += 1

            if c == '}':
                open_brackets -= 1
                if not open_brackets:
                    lines.append(data[start: index+1])

    return lines

Answer 1

You can use the json raw_decoder! This allows the reading of json strings with extra data after the first json object. An example of usage would be:

>>> dec = json.JSONDecoder()
>>> json_str = '{"data": "Foo"}{"data": "BarBaz"}{"data": "Qux"}'
>>> dec.raw_decode(json_str)
({u'data': u'Foo'}, 15)
>>> dec.raw_decode(json_str[15:])
({u'data': u'BarBaz'}, 18)
>>> dec.raw_decode(json_str[33:])
({u'data': u'Qux'}, 15)

The first part of the tuple is the json object, the second is how much of the string was used when reading it. Therefore a loop like this will allow you to iterate over all the json objects in a string.

dec = json.JSONDecoder()
pos = 0
while not pos == len(str(json_str)):
    j, json_len = dec.raw_decode(str(json_str)[pos:])
    pos += json_len
    # Do something with the json j here