How can I convert JSON to CSV?

Question

I have a JSON file I want to convert to a CSV file. How can I do this with Python?

I tried:

import json
import c         


        

Answer 1

Alec's answer is great, but it doesn't work in the case where there are multiple levels of nesting. Here's a modified version that supports multiple levels of nesting. It also makes the header names a bit nicer if the nested object already specifies its own key (e.g. Firebase Analytics / BigTable / BigQuery data):

"""Converts JSON with nested fields into a flattened CSV file.
"""

import sys
import json
import csv
import os

import jsonlines

from orderedset import OrderedSet

# from https://stackoverflow.com/a/28246154/473201
def flattenjson( b, prefix='', delim='/', val=None ):
  if val is None:
    val = {}

  if isinstance( b, dict ):
    for j in b.keys():
      flattenjson(b[j], prefix + delim + j, delim, val)
  elif isinstance( b, list ):
    get = b
    for j in range(len(get)):
      key = str(j)

      # If the nested data contains its own key, use that as the header instead.
      if isinstance( get[j], dict ):
        if 'key' in get[j]:
          key = get[j]['key']

      flattenjson(get[j], prefix + delim + key, delim, val)
  else:
    val[prefix] = b

  return val

def main(argv):
  if len(argv) < 2:
    raise Error('Please specify a JSON file to parse')

  print "Loading and Flattening..."
  filename = argv[1]
  allRows = []
  fieldnames = OrderedSet()
  with jsonlines.open(filename) as reader:
    for obj in reader:
      # print 'orig:\n'
      # print obj
      flattened = flattenjson(obj)
      #print 'keys: %s' % flattened.keys()
      # print 'flattened:\n'
      # print flattened
      fieldnames.update(flattened.keys())
      allRows.append(flattened)

  print "Exporting to CSV..."
  outfilename = filename + '.csv'
  count = 0
  with open(outfilename, 'w') as file:
    csvwriter = csv.DictWriter(file, fieldnames=fieldnames)
    csvwriter.writeheader()
    for obj in allRows:
      # print 'allRows:\n'
      # print obj
      csvwriter.writerow(obj)
      count += 1

  print "Wrote %d rows" % count



if __name__ == '__main__':
  main(sys.argv)