How can I parse (read) and use JSON in Python?

My Python program receives JSON data, and I need to get bits of information out of it. How can I parse the data and use the result? I think I need to use json.loads for this task, but I can't understand how to do it.

For example, suppose that I have jsonStr = '{"one" : "1", "two" : "2", "three" : "3"}'. Given this JSON, and an input of "two", how can I get the corresponding data, "2"?

_{Beware that .load is for files; .loads is for strings. See also: Reading JSON from a file.}

_{Occasionally, a JSON document is intended to represent tabular data. If you have something like this and are trying to use it with Pandas, see Python - How to convert JSON File to Dataframe.}

_{Some data superficially looks like JSON, but is not JSON.}

_{For example, sometimes the data comes from applying repr to native Python data structures. The result may use quotes differently, use title-cased True and False rather than JSON-mandated true and false, etc. For such data, see Convert a String representation of a Dictionary to a dictionary or How to convert string representation of list to a list.}

_{Another common variant format puts separate valid JSON-formatted data on each line of the input. (Proper JSON cannot be parsed line by line, because it uses balanced brackets that can be many lines apart.) This format is called JSONL. See Loading JSONL file as JSON objects.}

_{Sometimes JSON data from a web source is padded with some extra text. In some contexts, this works around security restrictions in browsers. This is called JSONP and is described at What is JSONP, and why was it created?. In other contexts, the extra text implements a security measure, as described at Why does Google prepend while(1); to their JSON responses?. Either way, handling this in Python is straightforward: simply identify and remove the extra text, and proceed as before.}

Solution

Very simple:

import json
data = json.loads('{"one" : "1", "two" : "2", "three" : "3"}')
print(data['two'])  # or `print data['two']` in Python 2