How to parse json file with c-style comments?

Question

I have a json file, such as the following:

    { 
       \"author\":\"John\",
       \"desc\": \"If it is important to decode all valid JSON correctly \\ 
an         


        

Answer 1

If you are like me who prefers avoiding external libraries, this function I wrote will read json from a file and remove "//" and "/* */" type comments:

def GetJsonFromFile(filePath):
    contents = ""
    fh = open(filePath)
    for line in fh:
        cleanedLine = line.split("//", 1)[0]
        if len(cleanedLine) > 0 and line.endswith("\n") and "\n" not in cleanedLine:
            cleanedLine += "\n"
        contents += cleanedLine
    fh.close
    while "/*" in contents:
        preComment, postComment = contents.split("/*", 1)
        contents = preComment + postComment.split("*/", 1)[1]
    return contents

Limitations: As David F. brought up in the comments, this will break beautifully (ie: horribly) with // and /* inside string literals. Would need to write some code around it if you want to support //, /*, */ within your json string contents.