json.loads() decodes only with raw string literal

Question

I am trying to execute the following code:

str_2_load='{"source":"\u003ca href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\" \u003eTwitter \u003c\/a\u003e"}'
json.loads(str_2_load)

Getting the following error:

File "C:\Python27\lib\json\decoder.py", line 381, in raw_decode obj, end = self.scan_once(s, idx) ValueError: Expecting , delimiter: line 1 column 26 (char 25)

But if I use the raw string literal, it works fine. i.e.

str_2_load=r'{"source":"\u003ca href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\" \u003eTwitter \u003c\/a\u003e"}'
json.loads(str_2_load)

Since the str_2_load is dynamically assigned, I am looking for a fix for the above issue.

Answer 1

replace all '\' with '\\':

>>> str_2_load='{"source":"\\u003ca href=\\"http:\\/\\/twitter.com\\" \\u003eTwitter    \\u003c\\/a\\u003e"}'
>>> json.loads(str_2_load)
{u'source': u'<a href="http://twitter.com" >Twitter </a>'}

Answer 2

I believe if you make str_2_load a raw string by adding a 'r' in the beginning of the string. Somehow this is related to the regex.

str_2_load=r'{"source":"\u003ca href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\" \u003eTwitter \u003c\/a\u003e"}'
json.loads(str_2_load)

#output {'source': '<a href="http://twitter.com" >Twitter </a>'}