lazyjson is a module for Python 3.2 or higher that provides lazy JSON I/O.

This is lazyjson version 3.0.2 (semver). The versioned API is described below, in the section API.

Usage

First you need a lazyjson object, which can represent a JSON formatted file on the file system:

>>> import lazyjson
>>> f = lazyjson.File('example-file.json')

or even a remote file:

>>> import lazyjson
>>> f = lazyjson.SFTPFile('example.com', 22, '/foo/bar/example-file.json', username='me')

You can then use the File object like a regular dict:

>>> print(f)
{'someKey': ['a', 'b', 'c']}

Okay, so far so good. But why not just use json.load? Well, this is where the “lazy” part comes in. Let's say some other program modifies our example-file.json. Let's do the same call again, still on the same File object:

>>> print(f['someKey'])
['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']

The result has magically changed, because the file is actually read each time you get data from it. If you have write permission, you can also modify the file simply by changing the values from the File object:

>>> f['someKey'] += ['e', 'f']
>>> with open('example-file.json') as text_file:
...     print(text_file.read())
... 
{
    "someKey": [
        "a",
        "b",
        "c",
        "d",
        "e",
        "f"
    ]
}

API

Lazyjson 2 provides the BaseFile ABC and the concrete subclasses File, CachedFile, HTTPFile, MultiFile, PythonFile, and SFTPFile.

BaseFile

BaseFile inherits from Node, and represents its own root node (see below).

It has 4 abstract methods:

• __eq__
• __hash__
• set: write the JSON value passed as argument to the file.
• value: read and return the JSON value from the file.

Both methods should handle native Python objects, as used in the json module.

It also has an __init__ method that takes no arguments and must be called from subclasses' __init__.

File

When instantiating a File, the first constructor argument must be one of the following:

• a valid single argument to the built-in function open,
• an open file object,
• or an instance of pathlib.Path.

The optional file_is_open argument can be used to force appropriate behavior for a file that is already open, or one that will be opened on each read or write access. By default, behavior depends on whether the file argument inherits from io.IOBase.

If a json.decoder.JSONDecodeError is encountered while reading the file and the File isn't in file_is_open mode, another attempt is made after 1 second. This avoids intermittent errors when the file is accessed while also in the middle of being written to disk. The optional tries argument specifies how many read attempts should be made before reraising the JSONDecodeError. The default value for this is 10.

If the optional init argument is given and the file does not exist, it will be created and the argument is encoded and written to the file. For an open file object, this parameter is ignored.

Any other keyword arguments, such as encoding, will be passed to the open calls.

Note that constructing a File from a file object may result in unexpected behavior, as lazyjson uses .read on the file every time a value is accessed, and .write every time one is changed. The file object must also support str input for changes to succeed.

CachedFile

The CachedFile class takes a mutable mapping cache and another BaseFile. Any access of the CachedFile's value will be retrieved from the cache if present, otherwise the inner BaseFile's value is stored in the cache and returned.

This class performs no cache invalidation whatsoever except when the CachedFile's value is modified.

HTTPFile

The HTTPFile class uses requests to represent a JSON file accessed via HTTP.

The constructor takes the request URL as a required positional-only argument. An optional post_url argument may also be given, which will then be used as the URL for POST requests when mutating the file. By default, the same request URL will be used.

Any other keyword arguments will be passed to the request as parameters (except for json which will be overwritten for POST requests).

MultiFile

A MultiFile represents a stack of JSON files, with values higher up on the stack extending or overwriting those below them.

The constructor takes a variable number of positional arguments, which should all be instances of BaseFile subclasses. These will become the file stack, listed from top to bottom.

When reading a MultiFile, a single file representation is created by recursively merging/overriding the values in the file stack. Two objects are merged into one, and all other types of JSON values, as well as an object and a different value, overwrite each other.

When writing to a MultiFile, only the topmost file is ever modified. It will be modified in such a way that using the reading algorithm on the multifile will have the intended effect. The only exception is deleting pairs from a JSON object, which is undefined behavior.

Note: the exact writing behavior of MultiFile is undefined and may change at any point without requiring a major release.

PythonFile

This class makes a lazyjson file out of a native Python object, as defined by the json module. It can be used in a MultiFile to provide a fallback value.

SFTPFile

The SFTPFile class uses paramiko to represent a JSON file accessed via SFTP.

The constructor takes the following required positional-only arguments:

• the hostname
• the port (usually 22)
• the remote path/filename

Any keyword arguments are passed to connect on the paramiko.Transport object.

If not passed to the constructor, the keyword argument pkey is initialized from the file ~/.ssh/id_rsa, and hostkey from ~/.ssh/known_hosts.

The file is fetched from the SFTP connection on each read, no caching is performed.

Node

A node represents a JSON value, such as an entire file (the root node), or a value inside an array inside an object inside the root node.

Nodes representing JSON arrays or objects can mostly be used like Python lists and dicts, respectively: they can be indexed, sliced, and iterated over as usual. Some of these operations may return nodes, or succeed even for missing keys. Trying this on primitive nodes (numbers, strings, booleans, or null) is undefined behavior.

Under the hood, the Node object only holds a reference to its file (BaseFile subclass instance), and its key path. All data is lazily read from, and immediately written to the file each time it is accessed. This means that you can have Node objects representing nonexistent nodes. This will become apparent when calling value on this node raises an exception.

Some methods to note:

• __iter__ takes a snapshot of the keys/indices at the time of being called, and always yields nodes: for object nodes, it behaves similar to the values method.
• get is overridden to always return a native Python object. It returns the value at the specified key, index, or slice if it exists, or the default value provided otherwise.
• set can be used to directly change the value of this node.
• value returns the JSON value of the node as a native Python object, similar to json.load.

And the properties:

• key returns the last element in the key_path (see below), or None for the root node.
• key_path returns a list of keys (strings, integers, or slices) which lead from the root node to this node. For example, in {"one": "eins", "two": ["dos", "deux"]}, the "dos" would have a key path of ["two", 0]. The root node's key path is [].
• parent returns the parent node, or None for the root node.
• root returns the root node of this file.