Sample code:
>>> import json
>>> json_string = json.dumps("ברי צקלה")
>>> print(json_string)
"\u05d1\u05e8\u05d9 \u05e6\u05e7\u05dc\u05d4"
The problem: it’s not human readable. My (smart) users want to verify or even edit text files with JSON dumps (and I’d rather not use XML).
Is there a way to serialize objects into UTF-8 JSON strings (instead of \uXXXX
)?
Best Answers
Use the ensure_ascii=False
switch to json.dumps()
, then encode the value to UTF-8 manually:
>>> json_string = json.dumps("ברי צקלה", ensure_ascii=False).encode('utf8')
>>> json_string
b'"\xd7\x91\xd7\xa8\xd7\x99 \xd7\xa6\xd7\xa7\xd7\x9c\xd7\x94"'
>>> print(json_string.decode())
"ברי צקלה"
If you are writing to a file, just use json.dump()
and leave it to the file object to encode:
with open('filename', 'w', encoding='utf8') as json_file:
json.dump("ברי צקלה", json_file, ensure_ascii=False)
Caveats for Python 2
For Python 2, there are some more caveats to take into account. If you are writing this to a file, you can use io.open()
instead of open()
to produce a file object that encodes Unicode values for you as you write, then use json.dump()
instead to write to that file:
with io.open('filename', 'w', encoding='utf8') as json_file:
json.dump(u"ברי צקלה", json_file, ensure_ascii=False)
Do note that there is a bug in the json
module where the ensure_ascii=False
flag can produce a mix of unicode
and str
objects. The workaround for Python 2 then is:
with io.open('filename', 'w', encoding='utf8') as json_file:
data = json.dumps(u"ברי צקלה", ensure_ascii=False)
# unicode(data) auto-decodes data to unicode if str
json_file.write(unicode(data))
In Python 2, when using byte strings (type str
), encoded to UTF-8, make sure to also set the encoding
keyword:
>>> d={ 1: "ברי צקלה", 2: u"ברי צקלה" }
>>> d
{1: '\xd7\x91\xd7\xa8\xd7\x99 \xd7\xa6\xd7\xa7\xd7\x9c\xd7\x94', 2: u'\u05d1\u05e8\u05d9 \u05e6\u05e7\u05dc\u05d4'}
>>> s=json.dumps(d, ensure_ascii=False, encoding='utf8')
>>> s
u'{"1": "\u05d1\u05e8\u05d9 \u05e6\u05e7\u05dc\u05d4", "2": "\u05d1\u05e8\u05d9 \u05e6\u05e7\u05dc\u05d4"}'
>>> json.loads(s)['1']
u'\u05d1\u05e8\u05d9 \u05e6\u05e7\u05dc\u05d4'
>>> json.loads(s)['2']
u'\u05d1\u05e8\u05d9 \u05e6\u05e7\u05dc\u05d4'
>>> print json.loads(s)['1']
ברי צקלה
>>> print json.loads(s)['2']
ברי צקלה