How to get string objects instead of Unicode from JSON

When handling JSON data, by default, using Python's json library to parse JSON data will interpret non-ASCII characters as Unicode. However, sometimes you may need to obtain the original string objects instead of Unicode representations. This can be achieved using Python's built-in features. Below is a step-by-step guide with examples:

Step 1: Read JSON Data

First, you need to read or receive JSON data. Suppose you have a JSON string as follows:

json
{
  "name": "张三",
  "age": 30,
  "city": "北京"
}

Step 2: Parse JSON Data

Use the json.loads() method to parse the JSON string into a Python dictionary. By default, Chinese characters are parsed as Unicode.

python
import json

json_data = '{"name": "张三", "age": 30, "city": "北京"}'
data = json.loads(json_data)

Step 3: Obtain String Objects

If you want to obtain string objects instead of Unicode from the parsed data, you can use the ensure_ascii=False parameter when parsing JSON. However, this is typically used for output. Another method to obtain string objects is to encode and decode the Unicode string.

Example Method:

python
# Encode the Unicode string to UTF-8 bytes and then decode it back to a string
name_str = data['name'].encode('utf-8').decode('utf-8')
print(name_str)  # Output: 张三

Explanation

In this example, the encode('utf-8') method converts the Unicode string to UTF-8 encoded bytes, and then decode('utf-8') converts these bytes back to a string. This way, you can obtain a string object instead of Unicode.

Summary

By using the above methods, you can obtain the original string objects when processing data parsed from JSON. This approach is particularly useful in scenarios involving file operations or network transmission where precise byte control is required.