How To Save A JSON File In Python

In this tutorial, we will learn how to save a JSON file in Python. JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight data-interchange format that is easy for humans to read and write, and easy for machines to parse and generate.

It is a very popular format for exchanging data, especially in web applications. Python provides a built-in library called json that allows us to work with JSON data.

Let’s explore how to save JSON data to a file using Python.

Step 1: Import the json library

First, we need to import the json library in our Python script.

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import json

Step 2: Create JSON data

Next, we will create an example JSON data that we will save to a file. We will use a dictionary to represent the JSON data, which will later be converted to a JSON string using the json.dump() method.

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data = {
    "name": "John",
    "age": 30,
    "city": "New York"
}

Step 3: Save JSON data to a file

Now that we have our JSON data ready, we can save it to a file. We will use Python’s built-in open() function to open a file in write mode (with ‘w’ as the second argument). Then, we will use the json.dump() function to write the JSON data into the file.

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with open('data.json', 'w') as file:
    json.dump(data, file)

In the code above, the with statement is used to open and close the file properly once the operation is completed. The json.dump() function takes two arguments: the JSON data and the file object.

Full Code

Here’s the full code for saving JSON data to a file in Python:

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import json
 
data = {
    "name": "John",
    "age": 30,
    "city": "New York"
}
 
with open('data.json', 'w') as file:
    json.dump(data, file)

Output

After running the code, you will see a new file named data.json created in the same directory as your Python script. This file will contain the following JSON data:

{
    "name": "John",
    "age": 30,
    "city": "New York"
}

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we learned how to save JSON data to a file in Python using the built-in json library. With the json.dump() function, we can easily write JSON data to files, making it convenient to store and share data in a widely supported format.