What does the 'b' character do in front of a string literal?

Question

Apparently, the following is the valid syntax:

my_string = b\'The string\'

I would like to know:

1. What does this b

Answer 1

You can use JSON to convert it to dictionary

import json
data = b'{"key":"value"}'
print(json.loads(data))

{"key":"value"}

---

FLASK:

This is an example from flask. Run this on terminal line:

import requests
requests.post(url='http://localhost(example)/',json={'key':'value'})

In flask/routes.py

@app.route('/', methods=['POST'])
def api_script_add():
    print(request.data) # --> b'{"hi":"Hello"}'
    print(json.loads(request.data))
return json.loads(request.data)

{'key':'value'}