Python Dict to JSON

Why this conversion needs its own parser

When you print() a Python dictionary, or paste one from a Jupyter notebook, debugger or log line, what you get back is Python's own literal syntax — not JSON. The two look almost identical but differ in exactly the spots that make a strict JSON parser fail: single quotes instead of double, True/False/Noneinstead of true/false/null, and Python-only types like tuples and sets that JSON has no syntax for at all.

This tool runs a small Python-literal parser (not eval(), and nothing is executed) that understands that syntax directly, then re-serialises the result as JSON — so you can take output straight from a Python script and paste it into a config file, an API request body, or a JSON-only tool.

Example

A dict as Python prints it:

{'id': 7, 'active': True, 'ref': None, 'tags': ('a', 'b')}

becomes:

{
  "id": 7,
  "active": true,
  "ref": null,
  "tags": [
    "a",
    "b"
  ]
}

What gets converted

• Quotes: single, double and triple-quoted strings, including r'raw', u'unicode' and adjacent-string concatenation.
• Constants: True → true, False → false, None → null.
• Numbers: ints, floats, underscores in literals (1_000), and hex/octal/binary (0xff, 0o17, 0b101).
• Containers: lists stay arrays; tuples and sets become arrays; nested dicts stay objects.
• Extras: trailing commas and # comments are ignored, matching how Python itself reads them.

Doing it in Python instead

If you're already inside a Python process, this is the direct equivalent of what the tool does:

import json, ast
data = ast.literal_eval(python_repr_string)
print(json.dumps(data, indent=2))

ast.literal_eval is the safe alternative to eval() — it only accepts literal values, never runs code.