Python JSON libraries

JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is rapidly becoming the number one data exchange format across a lot of fields and, no, it's no different. The lightweight syntax and the similarity to existing data structures makes it a perfect match for Python.

We'll use the following geoJSON sample document for this section from the Wikipedia article on GeoJSON found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoJSON

The document contains a single point:

{
    "type": "Feature",
    "id": "OpenLayers.Feature.Vector_314",
    "properties": {},
    "geometry": {
        "type": "Point",
        "coordinates": [
            97.03125,
            39.7265625
        ]
    },
    "crs": {
        "type": "name",
        "properties": {
            "name": "urn:ogc:def:crs:OGC:1.3:CRS84"
        }
    }
}

This sample is just a simple point with new attributes which would be stored in the properties data structure of the geometry. First we'll compact the sample document into a single string to make...