Reading JSON and YAML in Python

• As a DevOps Engineer, you should be able to parse files, be it txt, json, yaml, etc.

• You should know what all libraries one should use in Python for DevOps.

• Python has numerous libraries like os, sys, json, yaml, etc that a DevOps Engineer uses in day-to-day tasks.

What is JSON?

The full form of JSON is JavaScript Object Notation. JSON is a lightweight data format for data interchange that can be easily read and written by humans, easily parsed, and generated by machines. It is a complete language-independent text format. To work with JSON data, Python has a built-in package called json. Json writes in a { } braces in the form of key:value separated by comma ,

What is YAML?

The full form of YAML is Yet Another Markup Language. It is a light-weight, human-readable data-representation language. It is primarily designed to make the format easy to read while including complex features. Since YAML is a superset of JSON, it can parse JSON with a YAML parser.The extensions in YAML are .yaml or .yml. YAML specifications allow user-defined data types as well as explicit data typing.

Tasks:

1. Create a Dictionary in Python and write it to a JSON File.

   Function Used:

   json.dump() Method can convert a Python object into a JSON File.

   Syntax: json.dump(dict, file_pointer)

   Parameters:

   • dictionary – name of dictionary which should be converted to JSON object.

   • file pointer – pointer of the file opened in write or append mode.

   • After writing dictionary into JSON file, a new .json file will create

     

2. Create a Dictionary in Python and write it to a JSON String.

   Function Used:

   json.dumps() Method can convert a Python object into a JSON String.

   Syntax: json.dumps(dict, file_pointer)

   Parameters:

   • dictionary – name of dictionary which should be converted to JSON object.

   • indent – defines the number of units for indentation

     

3. Read a JSON file services.json kept in this folder and print the service names of every cloud service provider.

   Function Used:

   json.load() Method accepts file object, parses the JSON data, populates a Python dictionary with the data, and returns it back to you.

   Syntax: json.load(fp)

   Parameters:

   • fp: File pointer to read text.

     

4. Create a JSON String and convert it into Python Dictionary.

   Function Used:

   json.loads() Method accepts file object, parses the JSON data, populates a Python dictionary with the data and returns it back to you.

   Syntax: json.load(jsonstring)

   Parameters:

   • jsonstring: valid JSON string

     

5. Read YAML file using python, file services. yaml and read the contents to convert yaml to json.

   • We can read the YAML file using the PyYAML module’s yaml.safe_load() function in python dictionary form

   • We will store the data in a JSON file using json.dump

   • Then we will read the JSON file using json.load

   • To install the PyYAML module, you’ll need to run the pip command, which is the package installer for Python.The below command installs the PyYAML module.

     pip install pyyaml

     

     

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