Serializing and deserializing JSON in Python - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Serializing and deserializing JSON

📖 Scenario: You are working on a simple contact list app. You want to save the contacts to a file and later read them back.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to convert a Python dictionary to a JSON string (serialize) and then convert it back from JSON string to a Python dictionary (deserialize).

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a Python dictionary with exact contact details

Create a JSON string from the dictionary using json.dumps()

Convert the JSON string back to a dictionary using json.loads()

Print the final dictionary to verify it matches the original

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Many apps save data in JSON format because it is easy to share and read by different programs.

💼 Career

Understanding JSON serialization and deserialization is essential for backend development, APIs, and data exchange between systems.

1

Create the contacts dictionary

Create a dictionary called contacts with these exact entries: 'Alice': '[e-mail]', 'Bob': '[e-mail]', 'Charlie': '[e-mail]'

Python

# Create the contacts dictionary with exact entries
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use curly braces {} to create a dictionary and separate keys and values with colons.

2

Import the json module

Add the line import json at the top of your code to use JSON functions

Python

# Import the json module
# Your code here

contacts = {
    'Alice': '[e-mail]',
    'Bob': '[e-mail]',
    'Charlie': '[e-mail]'
}

Need a hint?

Use import json to access JSON functions in Python.

3

Serialize the dictionary to JSON string

Create a variable called contacts_json and set it to the JSON string of contacts using json.dumps(contacts)

Python

# Convert contacts dictionary to JSON string
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use json.dumps() to convert a dictionary to a JSON string.

4

Deserialize the JSON string and print

Create a variable called contacts_loaded and set it to the dictionary obtained by deserializing contacts_json using json.loads(contacts_json). Then print contacts_loaded

Python

# Convert JSON string back to dictionary and print it
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use json.loads() to convert JSON string back to a dictionary. Then use print() to show the result.