Issue with creating a dictionary with Python and send it with a POST request

I am breaking my head for the lat 5 hours to find out how to create programmatically in Python a dictionary with specific values inside which I take from a list. It sounds very easy (and it must be) but I am totally lost among errors with double quotes, string values and escaping characters. Any help would be really most appreciated. At least to understand what the heck I am doing wrong:

I will try to be as more detailed as possible. What I want to do is to create programmatically this:

    checkNode = {'statements':[
      {"statement":"MATCH (n:RealNode { id: "1" }) SET n.telecomType = 'P', n.buildingType= 'c' RETURN n"}, 
        {"statement":"MATCH (n:RealNode { id: "2" }) SET n.telecomType = 'P', n.buildingType= 'w' RETURN n"}, {...}, {...}
     ]}

The above its a Neo4J query, which I want to execute by sending a POST request like this:

    mkr = requests.post(url, data=json.dumps(checkNode), headers=headers)

This is the procedure I follow:

First I convert the x into a string where x is:

x = {"statement":"MATCH (n:RealNode { id: "1" }) SET n.telecomType = 'P', n.buildingType= 'c' RETURN n"}

stringX = str(x)

Then I append this string into a list (mylist()). In the end the list has a number of strings inside.
Then I use the "join" method to join all the values inside the list and seperate them with comma:
```
allStatement = ','.join(mylist)
```
Then I create the variable "checkNode" which is the one I will send to my POST request:
```
checkNode = {'statements':[allStatement]}
```
Between the 4th and the 6th step I have tried a series of things such as replacing quotes and converting into string the variable "checkNode".

I sent the request:

mkr = requests.post(url, data=json.dumps(checkNode), headers=headers)
print(mkr.text)

The request never is sent. I printed the checkNode variable and it looks like this:

    {'statements': ["{'statement': MATCH (n:RealNode { id: 'P3301041101' }) SET n.telecomType = 'P', n.buildingType= 'sealed' RETURN n},{'statement': CREATE (dsld:DslSldBconf {nodeType:'P3301041101', id: 'DSL-SLD48-BCONF-ALU', temaxia: '1'})}..."]}

    I think one of the problems here is the double quotes after the [

I have spent hours experimenting with different parameters but I can not make it work. What am I doing wrong here? Thanks a lot!

Solution

You shouldn't be messing around with manual string processing; the json module does all of that for you. What you want is more like:

x = {"statement":"MATCH (n:RealNode { id: "1" }) SET n.telecomType = 'P', n.buildingType= 'c' RETURN n"}
statement_list = [x]

# add any more statements to statement_list, probably using append()

checkNode = {'statements': statement_list}

mkr = requests.post(url, data=json.dumps(checkNode), headers=headers)
print(mkr.text)

Also, be careful of what's an str and what's a bytes, for what you send over the network.