How to convert a string to a dictionary

In [1]:

import ast

In [2]:

#this is a string representation of a dictionary.
string = '{"a":"apple","b":"banana","c":"chips"}'

In [3]:

#note that the key returns an error because it is not a dictionary
string['a']

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
TypeError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-3-e9bc6d56e007> in <module>()
      1 #note that the key returns an error because it is not a dictionary
----> 2 string['a']

TypeError: string indices must be integers, not str

In [4]:

#This evaluates the string representation into a dictionary
d = ast.literal_eval(string)

In [5]:

d

Out[5]:

{'a': 'apple', 'b': 'banana', 'c': 'chips'}

In [6]:

#The key now returns the value
d['a']

Out[6]:

'apple'