python JSON only get keys in first level

Question

I have a very long and complicated json object but I only want to get the items/keys in the first level!

Example:

{
    "1": "a", 
    "3": "b", 
    "8": {
        "12": "c", 
        "25": "d"
    }
}

I want to get 1,3,8 as result!

I found this code:

for key, value in data.iteritems():
    print key, value

But it prints all keys (also 12 and 25)

Asked By: TeNNoX

||

Source

Answer 1

Just do a simple .keys()

>>> dct = {
...     "1": "a", 
...     "3": "b", 
...     "8": {
...         "12": "c", 
...         "25": "d"
...     }
... }
>>> 
>>> dct.keys()
['1', '8', '3']
>>> for key in dct.keys(): print key
...
1
8
3
>>>

If you need a sorted list:

keylist = dct.keys() # this is of type `dict_key`, NOT a `list`
keylist.sort()

And if you want them as simple list, do this:

list(dct_instance.keys())

Answered By: karthikr

Answer 2

for key in data.keys():
    print key

Answered By: Joe Frambach

Answer 3

A good way to check whether a python object is an instance of a type is to use isinstance() which is Python’s ‘built-in’ function.
For Python 3.6:

dct = {
       "1": "a", 
       "3": "b", 
       "8": {
            "12": "c", 
            "25": "d"
           }
      }

for key in dct.keys():
    if isinstance(dct[key], dict)== False:
       print(key, dct[key])
#shows:
# 1 a
# 3 b

Answered By: Hafizur Rahman

Answer 4

As Karthik mentioned, dct.keys() will work but it will return all the keys in dict_keys type not in list type. So if you want all the keys in a list, then list(dct.keys()) will work.

Answered By: Praveen Manupati

python JSON only get keys in first level

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