Generate a file that only contains the structural parts (i.e. brackets) of a json file without other contents

Question

Is there a way to extract the structural details of a json file using Python?

I have a file that looks something like this:

{
"help": "https://?name=package_search", 
"success": true,
"result": {
      "count": 47, 
      "facets": {}, 
      "results": [
         {
           "author": "ggm",
           "author_email": "ggm@____.nl",
           "creator_user_id": "x_x_x_x" }]}}

Whereas I only want to see a structure that would be something like this:

{
   {
      [
       {
        }
       {
        }
         ]
              }
                   }

Is this possible to achieve with Python?

Answer 1

You can use a regex (assuming the data is still in string form and not yet parsed to a dict):

import re

s = """{
"help": "https://?name=package_search", 
"success": true,
"result": {
      "count": 47, 
      "facets": {}, 
      "results": [
         {
           "author": "ggm",
           "author_email": "ggm@____.nl",
           "creator_user_id": "x_x_x_x" }]}}"""

print(re.sub(r"[^{}[\]\n]", ' ', s))

Will give:

{
                                        
                
          {
                   
                {}  
                 [
         {
                           
                                         
                                        }]}}

This uses re.sub which is the regex version of replace and basically says: "Replace everything except brackets and new line with a space" (see the demo).