How to handle nested JSON parsing with varying structures in Python 3.11?
I recently switched to I'm dealing with Hey everyone, I'm running into an issue that's driving me crazy... I'm currently working on a project where I'm fetching data from an API that returns a nested JSON structure. The question is that the structure of the JSON can vary significantly based on the request parameters. For example, the same endpoint can return the following two structures: ```json { "data": { "user": { "id": 1, "name": "Alice", "contacts": [ { "type": "email", "value": "alice@example.com" }, { "type": "phone", "value": "+1234567890" } ] } } } ``` and ```json { "data": { "user": { "id": 2, "name": "Bob" } } } ``` In the first case, the user has contact details, but in the second case, those details are missing. When I try to access the contacts in my code like this: ```python user_data = response.json()['data']['user'] contacts = user_data['contacts'] ``` I get a `KeyError` if the contacts key doesn't exist in the second structure. I tried using `user_data.get('contacts', [])`, which does prevent the behavior, but I still want to handle the situation in a way that doesn't just silently ignore missing data. Is there a best practice for parsing such variable JSON structures in Python? Should I use a try-except block, or is there a more elegant way to deal with this in a way that captures the absence of expected data for logging or behavior handling? I'm using Python 3.11 and would appreciate any advice on how to systematically approach this parsing scenario while maintaining clarity and performance. Any ideas what could be causing this? This is part of a larger application I'm building.