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pandas.read_json

pandas.read_json(path_or_buf=None, orient=None, typ='frame', dtype=None, convert_axes=None, convert_dates=True, keep_default_dates=True, numpy=False, precise_float=False, date_unit=None, encoding=None, lines=False, chunksize=None, compression='infer')[source]

Convert a JSON string to pandas object.

Parameters:
path_or_buf : a valid JSON str, path object or file-like object

Any valid string path is acceptable. The string could be a URL. Valid URL schemes include http, ftp, s3, and file. For file URLs, a host is expected. A local file could be: file://localhost/path/to/table.json.

If you want to pass in a path object, pandas accepts any os.PathLike.

By file-like object, we refer to objects with a read() method, such as a file handler (e.g. via builtin open function) or StringIO.

orient : string,

Indication of expected JSON string format. Compatible JSON strings can be produced by to_json() with a corresponding orient value. The set of possible orients is:

  • 'split' : dict like {index -> [index], columns -> [columns], data -> [values]}
  • 'records' : list like [{column -> value}, ... , {column -> value}]
  • 'index' : dict like {index -> {column -> value}}
  • 'columns' : dict like {column -> {index -> value}}
  • 'values' : just the values array

The allowed and default values depend on the value of the typ parameter.

  • when typ == 'series',
    • allowed orients are {'split','records','index'}
    • default is 'index'
    • The Series index must be unique for orient 'index'.
  • when typ == 'frame',
    • allowed orients are {'split','records','index', 'columns','values', 'table'}
    • default is 'columns'
    • The DataFrame index must be unique for orients 'index' and 'columns'.
    • The DataFrame columns must be unique for orients 'index', 'columns', and 'records'.

New in version 0.23.0: ‘table’ as an allowed value for the orient argument

typ : {‘frame’, ‘series’}, default ‘frame’

The type of object to recover.

dtype : bool or dict, default None

If True, infer dtypes; if a dict of column to dtype, then use those; if False, then don’t infer dtypes at all, applies only to the data.

For all orient values except 'table', default is True.

Changed in version 0.25.0: Not applicable for orient='table'.

convert_axes : bool, default None

Try to convert the axes to the proper dtypes.

For all orient values except 'table', default is True.

Changed in version 0.25.0: Not applicable for orient='table'.

convert_dates : bool or list of str, default True

List of columns to parse for dates. If True, then try to parse datelike columns. A column label is datelike if

  • it ends with '_at',
  • it ends with '_time',
  • it begins with 'timestamp',
  • it is 'modified', or
  • it is 'date'.
keep_default_dates : bool, default True

If parsing dates, then parse the default datelike columns.

numpy : bool, default False

Direct decoding to numpy arrays. Supports numeric data only, but non-numeric column and index labels are supported. Note also that the JSON ordering MUST be the same for each term if numpy=True.

precise_float : bool, default False

Set to enable usage of higher precision (strtod) function when decoding string to double values. Default (False) is to use fast but less precise builtin functionality.

date_unit : str, default None

The timestamp unit to detect if converting dates. The default behaviour is to try and detect the correct precision, but if this is not desired then pass one of ‘s’, ‘ms’, ‘us’ or ‘ns’ to force parsing only seconds, milliseconds, microseconds or nanoseconds respectively.

encoding : str, default is ‘utf-8’

The encoding to use to decode py3 bytes.

New in version 0.19.0.

lines : bool, default False

Read the file as a json object per line.

New in version 0.19.0.

chunksize : int, optional

Return JsonReader object for iteration. See the line-delimited json docs for more information on chunksize. This can only be passed if lines=True. If this is None, the file will be read into memory all at once.

New in version 0.21.0.

compression : {‘infer’, ‘gzip’, ‘bz2’, ‘zip’, ‘xz’, None}, default ‘infer’

For on-the-fly decompression of on-disk data. If ‘infer’, then use gzip, bz2, zip or xz if path_or_buf is a string ending in ‘.gz’, ‘.bz2’, ‘.zip’, or ‘xz’, respectively, and no decompression otherwise. If using ‘zip’, the ZIP file must contain only one data file to be read in. Set to None for no decompression.

New in version 0.21.0.
Returns:
Series or DataFrame

The type returned depends on the value of typ.

See also

DataFrame.to_json
Convert a DataFrame to a JSON string.
Series.to_json
Convert a Series to a JSON string.

Notes

Specific to orient='table', if a DataFrame with a literal Index name of index gets written with to_json(), the subsequent read operation will incorrectly set the Index name to None. This is because index is also used by DataFrame.to_json() to denote a missing Index name, and the subsequent read_json() operation cannot distinguish between the two. The same limitation is encountered with a MultiIndex and any names beginning with 'level_'.

Examples

>>> df = pd.DataFrame([['a', 'b'], ['c', 'd']],
...                   index=['row 1', 'row 2'],
...                   columns=['col 1', 'col 2'])

Encoding/decoding a Dataframe using 'split' formatted JSON:

>>> df.to_json(orient='split')
'{"columns":["col 1","col 2"],
  "index":["row 1","row 2"],
  "data":[["a","b"],["c","d"]]}'
>>> pd.read_json(_, orient='split')
      col 1 col 2
row 1     a     b
row 2     c     d

Encoding/decoding a Dataframe using 'index' formatted JSON:

>>> df.to_json(orient='index')
'{"row 1":{"col 1":"a","col 2":"b"},"row 2":{"col 1":"c","col 2":"d"}}'
>>> pd.read_json(_, orient='index')
      col 1 col 2
row 1     a     b
row 2     c     d

Encoding/decoding a Dataframe using 'records' formatted JSON. Note that index labels are not preserved with this encoding.

>>> df.to_json(orient='records')
'[{"col 1":"a","col 2":"b"},{"col 1":"c","col 2":"d"}]'
>>> pd.read_json(_, orient='records')
  col 1 col 2
0     a     b
1     c     d

Encoding with Table Schema

>>> df.to_json(orient='table')
'{"schema": {"fields": [{"name": "index", "type": "string"},
                        {"name": "col 1", "type": "string"},
                        {"name": "col 2", "type": "string"}],
                "primaryKey": "index",
                "pandas_version": "0.20.0"},
    "data": [{"index": "row 1", "col 1": "a", "col 2": "b"},
            {"index": "row 2", "col 1": "c", "col 2": "d"}]}'
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