Saving utf-8 texts in json.dumps as UTF8, not as \u escape sequence

Question

sample code:

>>> import json
>>> json_string = json.dumps(\"ברי צקלה\")
>>> print json_string
\"\\u05d1\\u05e8\\u05d9 \\u05e6\\u05         


        

Answer 1

Peters' python 2 workaround fails on an edge case:

d = {u'keyword': u'bad credit  \xe7redit cards'}
with io.open('filename', 'w', encoding='utf8') as json_file:
    data = json.dumps(d, ensure_ascii=False).decode('utf8')
    try:
        json_file.write(data)
    except TypeError:
        # Decode data to Unicode first
        json_file.write(data.decode('utf8'))

UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xe7' in position 25: ordinal not in range(128)

It was crashing on the .decode('utf8') part of line 3. I fixed the problem by making the program much simpler by avoiding that step as well as the special casing of ascii:

with io.open('filename', 'w', encoding='utf8') as json_file:
  data = json.dumps(d, ensure_ascii=False, encoding='utf8')
  json_file.write(unicode(data))

cat filename
{"keyword": "bad credit  çredit cards"}