how to format json dumps

Question

I got json dumps like this:

"aaa": {
    "bbb": {
        "ccc": {
            "ddd": "string1",
            "eee": "string2"
        }
    },
    "kkk": "string3"
}

And I'd like to format it this way: enclose every key-value pair (separated by :) with {} and then replace : with ,.

I know that I can use re.sub() to replace string patterns, but regular expression does not work with overlapping patterns, so I can match, for example, "ddd": "string1" but not "ccc": {...} at the same time.

For the above json string, I'd like to get:

{"aaa", {
    {"bbb", {
        {"ccc", {
            {"ddd", "string1"},
            {"eee", "string2"}
        }}
    }},
    {"kkk", "string3"}
}}

Answer 1

Here's a hack which converts everything to lists and then changes square brackets to curly ones. If your strings might contain square brackets that'll be a problem.

import json

inp = """
{
    "aaa": {
        "bbb": {
            "ccc": {
                "ddd": "string1",
                "eee": "string2"
            }
        },
        "kkk": "string3"
    }
}
"""

inp = json.loads(inp)


def items(d):
    if isinstance(d, dict):
        return [(k, items(v)) for k, v in d.items()]
    return d


inp = items(inp)

print(json.dumps(inp, indent=2).replace("[", "{").replace("]", "}"))

Output:

{
  {
    "aaa",
    {
      {
        "bbb",
        {
          {
            "ccc",
            {
              {
                "ddd",
                "string1"
              },
              {
                "eee",
                "string2"
              }
            }
          }
        }
      },
      {
        "kkk",
        "string3"
      }
    }
  }
}