How do I process this using Python?

[Anthony Papillion]

On 08/31/2013 07:32 PM, Cameron Simpson wrote:
> On 31Aug2013 19:19, Anthony Papillion <papillion at gmail.com> wrote:
> | On 08/31/2013 06:48 PM, Chris Angelico wrote:
> | > On Sun, Sep 1, 2013 at 9:44 AM, Anthony Papillion <papillion at gmail.com> wrote:
> | >> I'm writing a processor for Bitmessage messages and I am needing to
> | >> parse the following returned JSON string:
> | >>
> | >> {u'inboxMessages':
> | > 
> | > Does the JSON string really have those u prefixes and apostrophes?
> | > That's not valid JSON. You may be able to use ast.literal_eval() on it
> | > - I was able to with the example data - but not a JSON parser. Can you
> | > sort out your transmission end?
> | 
> | I think I remembered what the 'u' prefix is. It indicates that the data
> | following is a unicode string. So could that be valid JSON data wrapped
> | up in unicode?
> 
> How sure are you that it is JSON? It looks to me like a message
> that might once have been JSON, but has already been passed through
> json.loads() for you.
> 
> What does type(the_json) say? What does repr(the_json) say?
> Print both.
> 
> I would guess it has already been parsed.
> 
> Cheers,

And you would be right! It's actually a dictionary!

Anthony