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Json – How to convert a string into dictionary, with string as key and data type as value in dict

I have a string dictionary as user input in Python console.

The string format looks like "{"Column A": str, "Column B": str}". Eventually, I want to convert this string to dict format like {"Column A": str, "Column B": str} so that I could use it in Pandas read_csv() converters.

However, I was unable to use json.loads() to convert, since the values are not string, but data types. I’m wondering if there’s any good way to convert this string into dictionary?

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  1. Chosen as BEST ANSWER
    0

    Answered myself. I was able to use the eval() method to resolve this issue.

    input_string = '{"Column A": str, "Column B": str}'

dict = eval(input_string)

print(dict)

    The output is {'Column A': <class 'str'>, 'Column B': <class 'str'>}. No error.


  2. 0

    If I understand correctly, you have a string representation of a dictionary where the values are not string literals but actual data types. In this case, you can use the ast.literal_eval() function from the ast module in Python to safely evaluate the string as a Python expression. Here’s an example of how you can use it to convert your string to a dictionary:

    import ast

input_string = '{"Column A": str, "Column B": str}'

# Safely evaluate the string as a Python expression
dictionary = ast.literal_eval(input_string)

print(dictionary)

    Output:

    {'Column A': <class 'str'>, 'Column B': <class 'str'>}

    Now you have a dictionary with the correct data types. You can pass this dictionary to the converters parameter of the read_csv() function in pandas to define custom converters for specific columns.

    Keep in mind that ast.literal_eval() evaluates the string as a Python expression, so make sure the input string is trusted and doesn’t contain any malicious code.

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