Recursive enumerate JSON hierarchy parent/child to dictionary

Question

I'm looking to flatten a JSON hierarchy of unknown structure to a dictionary, capturing the full key hierarchy in the dictionary result to uniquely identify it.

So far I am able to print the key:value pair for the all the parent/child nodes recursively but I am having trouble:

(1) figuring out how to pass the parent hierarchy keys for a recursive (child) execution and then reset it when it exits the child key.

(2) writing to a single dictionary result - when I define the dictionary within the recursive function, I end up creating multiple dictionaries ... Do I need to wrap this function in a master function to avoid this?

Thanks!

# flatten/enumerate example I'm using

with open('_json\\file.json') as f:
    data = json.load(f)

def parse_json_response(content):

    if len (content.keys()) > 1 :
        for key, value in content.items():
            if type(value) is dict:
                parse_json_response(value)
            else:
                print('{}:{}'.format(key,value))
    else:
        print(value)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    parse_json_response(data)

# current result as print
id = 12345
firstName = John
lastName = Smith
DOB = 1980-01-01
phone = 123
line1 = Unit 4
line2 = 3 Main st

# desired result to dictionary {}
id = 12345
fields.firstName = John
fields.lastName = Smith
fields.DOB = 1980-01-01
fields.phone = 123
fields.address.residential.line1 = Unit 4
fields.address.residential.line2 = 3 Main st

Answer 1

Try this below:

test = {
    "ID": "12345",
    "fields": {
        "firstName": "John",
        "lastName": "Smith",
        "DOB": "1980-01-01",
        "phoneLand": "610292659333",
        "address": {
            "residential": {
                "line1": "Unit 4",
                "line2": "3 Main st"
            }
        }
    }
}

def func(d, parent=""):
    for key, value in d.items():
        if isinstance(value, dict):
            func(value, parent=parent+key+".")
        else:
            print(f"{parent+key} = {value}")


func(test)

Result:

ID = 12345
fields.firstName = John
fields.lastName = Smith
fields.DOB = 1980-01-01
fields.phoneLand = 610292659333
fields.address.residential.line1 = Unit 4
fields.address.residential.line2 = 3 Main st