Escape double quotes for JSON in Python

Solution 1:

You should be using the json module. json.dumps(string). It can also serialize other python data types.

import json

>>> s = 'my string with "double quotes" blablabla'

>>> json.dumps(s)
<<< '"my string with \\"double quotes\\" blablabla"'

Solution 2:

Note that you can escape a json array / dictionary by doing json.dumps twice and json.loads twice:

>>> a = {'x':1}
>>> b = json.dumps(json.dumps(a))
>>> b
'"{\\"x\\": 1}"'
>>> json.loads(json.loads(b))
{u'x': 1}

Solution 3:

>>> s = 'my string with \\"double quotes\\" blablabla'
>>> s
'my string with \\"double quotes\\" blablabla'
>>> print s
my string with \"double quotes\" blablabla
>>> 

When you just ask for 's' it escapes the \ for you, when you print it, you see the string a more 'raw' state. So now...

>>> s = """my string with "double quotes" blablabla"""
'my string with "double quotes" blablabla'
>>> print s.replace('"', '\\"')
my string with \"double quotes\" blablabla
>>>