python JSON object must be str, bytes or bytearray, not 'dict

Question

In Python 3, to load json previously saved like this:

json.dumps(dictionary)

the output is something like

{\"(\'Hello\',)\": 6, \"

Answer 1

You are passing a dictionary to a function that expects a string.

This syntax:

{"('Hello',)": 6, "('Hi',)": 5}

is both a valid Python dictionary literal and a valid JSON object literal. But loads doesn't take a dictionary; it takes a string, which it then interprets as JSON and returns the result as a dictionary (or string or array or number, depending on the JSON, but usually a dictionary).

If you pass this string to loads:

'''{"('Hello',)": 6, "('Hi',)": 5}'''

then it will return a dictionary that looks a lot like the one you are trying to pass to it.

You could also exploit the similarity of JSON object literals to Python dictionary literals by doing this:

json.loads(str({"('Hello',)": 6, "('Hi',)": 5}))

But in either case you would just get back the dictionary that you're passing in, so I'm not sure what it would accomplish. What's your goal?