👀 Views: 2 💬 Answers: 1 📅 Created: 2025-06-11

json python parsing Python

I keep running into I'm stuck on something that should probably be simple... I'm working with unexpected `None` values when attempting to parse a JSON array in Python using the built-in `json` library. The JSON data I'm working with is structured as follows: ```json { "users": [ { "name": "Alice", "age": 30 }, { "name": "Bob", "age": null }, { "name": "Charlie" } ] } ``` When I try to access the age of each user, I get `None` for Bob and Charlie, which is causing issues in my application as I expect an `age` field to always exist. Here’s the relevant Python code: ```python import json json_data = ''' { "users": [ { "name": "Alice", "age": 30 }, { "name": "Bob", "age": null }, { "name": "Charlie" } ] } ''' data = json.loads(json_data) for user in data['users']: name = user['name'] age = user.get('age', 'Not Provided') # Using get to avoid KeyError print(f'{name} is {age}') ``` This code outputs: ``` Alice is 30 Bob is None Charlie is None ``` I expected to see 'Charlie is Not Provided' instead of 'Charlie is None'. It seems like the `json` library is returning `None` when a key does not exist in the JSON object. Is there a way to handle this so that I can specify a default value when the key is missing without getting `None`? I’ve also tried using `defaultdict` from `collections`, but that didn’t seem to work as intended either. Any insights or best practices for dealing with optional fields in JSON parsing would be greatly appreciated! I’m using Python 3.9.1. Thanks in advance! This is part of a larger service I'm building. I'd really appreciate any guidance on this. This is part of a larger service I'm building. How would you solve this?