Reading and Writing JSON Files

JSON files are really useful. They let you store not just plain text, but dictionaries! You pronounce them as “Jay-Sawn” (Jason is more like “Jay-Sun”, which isn’t quite right here)

Writing a JSON file

Writing a JSON file is called “dumping”.

import json

bunny_dict = {"name": "Euclid", "age": 2}

with open("bunny.json", "w") as fp:
    json.dump(bunny_dict, fp)

And that’s it! One nice part about JSON is it that you can dump a JSON dictionary to a string instead of a file!

import json

bunny_dict = {"name": "Euclid", "age": 2}

new_str = json.dumps(bunny_dict)

print(new_str)

Notice that it is json.dumps now. The s in dumps means “dump string”.

Reading a JSON file

Loading a JSON file is called “loading”

import json

with open("bunny.json", "r") as fp:
    bunny_dict = json.load(fp)

Pretty easy! The nice part about using JSON is that you can use dictionaries to store information. This means you can store and load information which requires more structure than a plain string, like character information or save game state.