convert string to dictionary in python (passing dict as plain str)

byMR

March 13, 2023

I have a string

test_string = "{Team A: [service1, service2], Team B: [service3, service4], Team 3: [service5, service6] }"

I want to know a way to convert this into a dictionary in python

>Solution :

The yaml library is able to load this. It will turn all your items into strings, unless they are parseable in python:

import yaml

test_string = "{Team A: [service1, service2], Team B: [service3, service4], Team 3: [service5, service6] }"

parsed_dict = yaml.safe_load(test_string)
print(parsed_dict)

Outputs:

{'Team A': ['service1', 'service2'], 'Team B': ['service3', 'service4'], 'Team 3': ['service5', 'service6']}

Here is another example of what it may parse:

>>> yaml.safe_load("{a b c : [123, 99.0, a string, another]}")
{'a b c': [123, 99.0, 'a string', 'another']}

You should be aware that YAML (and so parsing with YAML) is a very complicated format that can have a lot of unintended effects. If possible you should find out if you can output JSON or some other serialised data from your Azure DevOps pipeline.