How to extract nested dictionary values from API response when getting list index error

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1

I’m working with an API that returns JSON data and I need to access some nested information. Here’s what I’m trying to do:

api_response = requests.get("https://api.example.com/data/feed")
data = json.loads(api_response.text)
print data["items"]["metadata"]["url"]

The data variable contains a dictionary after I parse the JSON response. I’m attempting to navigate through the nested structure to get a specific URL value, but I keep running into this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "api_parser.py", line 8, in <module>
    print data["items"]["metadata"]["url"]
TypeError: list indices must be integers, not str

What’s the right way to handle this situation? I think the issue might be that one of the nested elements is actually a list instead of a dictionary, but I’m not sure how to fix my code.

2

yah, items is for sure a list, not a dict. just print the whole data with print(data) to see what’s up. after that use data["items"][0]["metadata"]["url"] to get the first item’s url.

3

The error you’re encountering indicates that part of the data structure is indeed a list rather than a dictionary. It’s probable that data["items"] is returning a list of dictionaries. You can verify this by using print(type(data["items"])). If it is a list, you should access the desired item using its index, such as data["items"][0]["metadata"]["url"] for the first entry. Additionally, consider implementing error handling for cases with empty lists or missing keys to avoid issues when the API response doesn’t match your expectations.