Can I get JSON to load into an OrderedDict?

Question

Ok so I can use an OrderedDict in json.dump. That is, an OrderedDict can be used as an input to JSON.

But can it be used as an output? If so how? In my

Answer 1

Some great news! Since version 3.6 the cPython implementation has preserved the insertion order of dictionaries (https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2016-September/146327.html). This means that the json library is now order preserving by default. Observe the difference in behaviour between python 3.5 and 3.6. The code:

import json
data = json.loads('{"foo":1, "bar":2, "fiddle":{"bar":2, "foo":1}}')
print(json.dumps(data, indent=4))

In py3.5 the resulting order is undefined:

{
    "fiddle": {
        "bar": 2,
        "foo": 1
    },
    "bar": 2,
    "foo": 1
}

In the cPython implementation of python 3.6:

{
    "foo": 1,
    "bar": 2,
    "fiddle": {
        "bar": 2,
        "foo": 1
    }
}

The really great news is that this has become a language specification as of python 3.7 (as opposed to an implementation detail of cPython 3.6+): https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2017-December/151283.html

So the answer to your question now becomes: upgrade to python 3.6! :)