Create in python a dictionary from JSON url

Question

I want to create a list in HTML of locations from JSON API url in python.

@app.route('/api')
def api():
url = urlopen('https://api.openaq.org/v1/locations?country=GB').read()
#encoded we do not need it
#encoded_data = json.dumps(url)

#create variables
array = []
data = {}

#decoded
decoded_data = json.loads(url)

#we search for result each entry
for i in decoded_data["results"]:
    #append every entry to an array
    array.append(i["location"])
#we create a dictionary from that array created which has a variable (for jinja2) called location
data = [dict(location=array)]
return render_template('api.html', data=data)

But instead of receiving each element, I get this:

[u'Aberdeen', u'Aberdeen Union Street Roadside', u'Aberdeen Wellington Road', u'Armagh Roadside', u'Aston Hill', u'Auchencorth Moss', u'Ballymena Ballykeel', u'Barnsley Gawber', u'Barnstaple A39', u'Bath Roadside', u'Belfast Centre', u"Belfast Stockman's Lane", u'Billingham', u'Birkenhead Borough Road', u'Birmingham A4540 Roads...

Edit: Template

 {% if data %}
    <ul>
    {% for d in data %}
      <li>{{ d.location }}</li>
    {% endfor %}
    </ul>
  {% else %}
    <p class="lead">
      You should not see this msg, otherwise, check the code again.
    </p>
  {% endif %}

Answer 1

I broke my answer down a bit because I didn't want to activate flask.

import requests

def api():
    res = requests.get('https://api.openaq.org/v1/locations?country=GB')
    data = res.json()['results']
    return data


@app.route('/api')
def api():
    res = requests.get('https://api.openaq.org/v1/locations?country=GB')
    try:
        data = res.json()['results']
    except KeyError:
        data = None
    # this is the logic that you use in your template, I moved it out here
    # cause i don't want to start a flask instance
    for d in data:
        print d['location']
    return render_template('api.html', data=data)

api()

Basically I use the requests module which can return a json. I pass the results to the data varible. I used a for loop to demo how it would work in your template. Basically pass in the data as a dictionary and get the location via iteration d['location']

So the code to use is

import requests

@app.route('/api')
def api():
    res = requests.get('https://api.openaq.org/v1/locations?country=GB')
    try:
        data = res.json()['results']
    except KeyError:
        data = None
    return render_template('api.html', data=data)

Answer 2

You are converting the array to a dict, but then you are putting the dict inside an array of length 1, with the only object being the dict. The issue is, your template is then expecting each element in the array to be a dictionary, with a "location" field.

You either can remove the square brackets from the conversion data = dict(location=array) and then update your template to just do for d in data.location, or you can update your append call to append a dictionary item instead of a string: array.append({"location": i["location"]})