Modify .json in python

Question

I want to know how to modify a .json, add new elements and save it in the same.

I have this data.json:

{

"utts": {
    "FADG0_SI1279": {
        "input": [
            {
                "feat": "/content/espnet/egs/timit/asr1/dump/train_dev/deltafalse/feats.1.ark:13",
                "name": "input1",
                "shape": [
                    180,
                    26
                ]
            }
        ],
        "output": [
            {
                "name": "target1",
                "shape": [
                    23,
                    42
                ],
                "text": "sil b r ih sil k s aa r er n aa l sil t er n ih sil t ih v sil",
                "token": "<space> b r ih <space> k s aa r er n aa l <space> t er n ih <space> t ih v <space>",
                "tokenid": "2 8 30 19 2 22 31 3 30 14 25 3 23 2 33 14 25 19 2 33 19 37 2"

....

I want to modify it and put the character "|" between each element of the "text", like this:

],
    "text": "sil | b | r | ih | sil | k | s | aa | r | er | n | aa | l | ..."
...´´´

Answer 1

As the first thing, you should convert your .json file to a Python dict:

import json
with open("data.json", 'w+') as file:
    myData = json.load(file)

and then you have to use it as a Python dict, and get the string you need:

myData["utts"]["output"][0]["text"] # Your string

and then you have to operate over the string:

myData["utts"]["output"][0]["text"] = ' | '.join(myData["utts"]["output"][0]["text"].split())

and then to code your dict back to a JSON object:

json.dump(myData, file)

Answer 2

If your text key is ALWAYS separated by one whitespace you could:

import json

with open('data.json') as f:
    data = json.load(f)
    

data['utts']['output']['text'] = data['utts']['output']['text'].replace(" ", " | ")

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

But that only works if you have one whitespace only as separator.

From there you can think about another edge cases.