How can I convert JSON to CSV?

Question

I have a JSON file I want to convert to a CSV file. How can I do this with Python?

I tried:

import json
import c         


        

Answer 1

I might be late to the party, but I think, I have dealt with the similar problem. I had a json file which looked like this

I only wanted to extract few keys/values from these json file. So, I wrote the following code to extract the same.

    """json_to_csv.py
    This script reads n numbers of json files present in a folder and then extract certain data from each file and write in a csv file.
    The folder contains the python script i.e. json_to_csv.py, output.csv and another folder descriptions containing all the json files.
"""

import os
import json
import csv


def get_list_of_json_files():
    """Returns the list of filenames of all the Json files present in the folder
    Parameter
    ---------
    directory : str
        'descriptions' in this case
    Returns
    -------
    list_of_files: list
        List of the filenames of all the json files
    """

    list_of_files = os.listdir('descriptions')  # creates list of all the files in the folder

    return list_of_files


def create_list_from_json(jsonfile):
    """Returns a list of the extracted items from json file in the same order we need it.
    Parameter
    _________
    jsonfile : json
        The json file containing the data
    Returns
    -------
    one_sample_list : list
        The list of the extracted items needed for the final csv
    """

    with open(jsonfile) as f:
        data = json.load(f)

    data_list = []  # create an empty list

    # append the items to the list in the same order.
    data_list.append(data['_id'])
    data_list.append(data['_modelType'])
    data_list.append(data['creator']['_id'])
    data_list.append(data['creator']['name'])
    data_list.append(data['dataset']['_accessLevel'])
    data_list.append(data['dataset']['_id'])
    data_list.append(data['dataset']['description'])
    data_list.append(data['dataset']['name'])
    data_list.append(data['meta']['acquisition']['image_type'])
    data_list.append(data['meta']['acquisition']['pixelsX'])
    data_list.append(data['meta']['acquisition']['pixelsY'])
    data_list.append(data['meta']['clinical']['age_approx'])
    data_list.append(data['meta']['clinical']['benign_malignant'])
    data_list.append(data['meta']['clinical']['diagnosis'])
    data_list.append(data['meta']['clinical']['diagnosis_confirm_type'])
    data_list.append(data['meta']['clinical']['melanocytic'])
    data_list.append(data['meta']['clinical']['sex'])
    data_list.append(data['meta']['unstructured']['diagnosis'])
    # In few json files, the race was not there so using KeyError exception to add '' at the place
    try:
        data_list.append(data['meta']['unstructured']['race'])
    except KeyError:
        data_list.append("")  # will add an empty string in case race is not there.
    data_list.append(data['name'])

    return data_list


def write_csv():
    """Creates the desired csv file
    Parameters
    __________
    list_of_files : file
        The list created by get_list_of_json_files() method
    result.csv : csv
        The csv file containing the header only
    Returns
    _______
    result.csv : csv
        The desired csv file
    """

    list_of_files = get_list_of_json_files()
    for file in list_of_files:
        row = create_list_from_json(f'descriptions/{file}')  # create the row to be added to csv for each file (json-file)
        with open('output.csv', 'a') as c:
            writer = csv.writer(c)
            writer.writerow(row)
        c.close()


if __name__ == '__main__':
    write_csv()

I hope this will help. For details on how this code work you can check here