Quickly Converting Python Dict to JSON

Recently, I’ve spent a lot of time going back and forth between Python dicts and JSON. For some reason, I decided last week that I’d be useful to be able to quickly convert a Python dict to pretty printed JSON.

I created a TextExpander snippet that takes a Python dict from the clipboard, converts it to JSON, and pastes it.

Here are the details:

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#!/usr/bin/env python
import os, json
import subprocess

def getClipboardData():
 p = subprocess.Popen(['pbpaste'], stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
 retcode = p.wait()
 data = p.stdout.read()
 return data

cb = eval(getClipboardData())

print json.dumps(cb, sort_keys=True, indent=4, separators=(',', ': '))