JSON Serialization

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight, human-readable data format used for data interchange, especially between web servers and applications. Python's built-in json module handles converting Python objects into JSON strings and vice versa.

Mapping Python to JSON

1. Encoding (Python to JSON String - .dumps())

Used to convert a Python dictionary or list into a JSON formatted string.

python import json

data = { "name": "Zoe", "age": 28, "is_active": True, "hobbies": ["reading", "coding"] }

The string representation of the data

json_string = json.dumps(data, indent=4) # indent=4 makes it readable print(json_string)

2. Decoding (JSON String to Python - .loads())

Converts a JSON formatted string back into a Python object (usually a dictionary).

python json_response = '{"id": 101, "status": "Success"}' python_data = json.loads(json_response)

print(python_data['status']) # Output: Success print(type(python_data)) # <class 'dict'>