Restructuring Database¶

Download this database of students:

student-points.json

The database is stored as a list of dictionaries. Let’s convert that structure to a dictionary of dictionaries. We will store all students in one dictionary called students.

students = {
    # ...
}

The student_id of each student in the original list will be the key. This is useful if we want to be able to quickly pull up a student by their id. We won’t need to run any search algorithm.

students = {
    "102356": {},  # student dict
    "185342": {},  # another student dict
}

If I wanted to pull up the student with id 102356, I would just use students[102356]. Integers can be keys in dictionaries in Python. The trouble is, that’s not the case for JSON - JSON keys must be strings (see below).

When you have restructured the data, write it to a file. It should look like (leaving out some entries for brevity):

{
    "188759": {
        "name": "Neli Kustner",
        "grade": 12,
        "student_id": 188759,
        "points": 1878
    },
    "105277": {
        "name": "Carolien Amador",
        "grade": 12,
        "student_id": 105277,
        "points": 1416
    },
    "136978": {
        "name": "Biff Van Rossem",
        "grade": 12,
        "student_id": 136978,
        "points": 2606
    }
}

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