There is a rule in Python programming called "it is Easier to Ask for Forgiveness than for Permission" (in short: EAFP). It means that you should catch exceptions instead of checking values for validity.

Thus, try the following:

try:
    qByUser = byUsrUrlObj.read()
    qUserData = json.loads(qByUser).decode('utf-8')
    questionSubjs = qUserData["all"]["questions"]
except ValueError:  # includes simplejson.decoder.JSONDecodeError
    print('Decoding JSON has failed')

EDIT: Since simplejson.decoder.JSONDecodeError actually inherits from ValueError (proof here), I simplified the catch statement by just using ValueError.

Using the following code I was able to open your JSON and print it. Save your JSON to temp.json and try this:

import json

with open("temp.json", "r") as infile:
    data = json.loads(infile.read())

print(data)

[This answer is outdated. See other answers for modern python versions]

Scanning the json/decoder.py source code, we can see that the decoder's error messages are constructed using the errmsg function:

Copydef errmsg(msg, doc, pos, end=None):
    # Note that this function is called from _json
    lineno, colno = linecol(doc, pos)
    if end is None:
        fmt = '{0}: line {1} column {2} (char {3})'
        return fmt.format(msg, lineno, colno, pos)
        #fmt = '%s: line %d column %d (char %d)'
        #return fmt % (msg, lineno, colno, pos)
    endlineno, endcolno = linecol(doc, end)
    fmt = '{0}: line {1} column {2} - line {3} column {4} (char {5} - {6})'
    return fmt.format(msg, lineno, colno, endlineno, endcolno, pos, end)
    #fmt = '%s: line %d column %d - line %d column %d (char %d - %d)'
    #return fmt % (msg, lineno, colno, endlineno, endcolno, pos, end)

Since this is a pure-python module, it's easy to wrap this function with a custom one. This process is known as monkey patching:

Copyimport json

original_errmsg= json.decoder.errmsg

def our_errmsg(msg, doc, pos, end=None):
    json.last_error_position= json.decoder.linecol(doc, pos)
    return original_errmsg(msg, doc, pos, end)

json.decoder.errmsg= our_errmsg

try:
    data = json.loads('{1:}')
except ValueError as e:
    print("error at", json.last_error_position)

Obviously, this solution is not ideal, since the implementation may change at any time, although it's still better than relying on the message. You should check if errmsg exists before patching (and possibly if there's no other arguments, or use varargs).

Your JSON data is enclosed in extra quotes making it a JSON string, and the data contained within that string is not JSON.

Print repr(decData) instead, you'll get:

'"{\'name\' : \'journal2\'}"'

and the JSON library is correctly interpreting that as one string with the literal contents {'name' : 'journal2'}. If you stripped the outer quotes, the contained characters are not valid JSON, because JSON strings must always be enclosed in double quotes.

For all the json module is concerned, decData could just as well have contained "This is not JSON" and postData would have been set to u'This is not JSON'.

>>> import json
>>> decData = '''"{'name' : 'journal2'}"'''
>>> json.loads(decData)
u"{'name' : 'journal2'}"
>>> json.loads(json.loads(decData))
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/json/__init__.py", line 326, in loads
    return _default_decoder.decode(s)
  File "/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/json/decoder.py", line 366, in decode
    obj, end = self.raw_decode(s, idx=_w(s, 0).end())
  File "/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/json/decoder.py", line 382, in raw_decode
    obj, end = self.scan_once(s, idx)
ValueError: Expecting property name: line 1 column 1 (char 1)

Fix whatever is producing this string, your view is fine, it's the input that is broken.

Another option, perhaps, is to use the strict=False argument

According to http://docs.python.org/2/library/json.html

"If strict is False (True is the default), then control characters will be allowed inside strings. Control characters in this context are those with character codes in the 0-31 range, including '\t' (tab), '\n', '\r' and '\0'."

For example:

json.loads(json_str, strict=False)

JSON is a subset of JavaScript. This means things that are valid JavaScript are not necessarily valid JSON.

• {"A":2,} is valid JS (except in old IE versions), but not valid JSON
• ['A':2} is not even valid JS since the braces do not match. If they matched, it would still be invalid JSON as JSON always uses " and never ' to quote strings.

See http://json.org/ for the JSON specs.

There doesn't appear to be anything wrong with the JSON data.

You may not be using the most appropriate technique for converting it to a Python dictionary.

Consider this:

Copyimport requests
import json

TARGET = '/Volumes/G-Drive/foo.json'
with requests.get('https://pastebin.com/raw/X8f4Nz6v', stream=True) as r:
    r.raise_for_status()
    with open(TARGET, 'wb') as j:
        for chunk in r.iter_content(4096):
            j.write(chunk)
with open(TARGET) as j:
    d = json.load(j)

This code runs to completion without any exception(s)

Optionally:

If you don't want to create a local file you can just build a bytearray as follows:

Copywith requests.get('https://pastebin.com/raw/X8f4Nz6v', stream=True) as r:
    r.raise_for_status()
    b = bytearray()
    for chunk in r.iter_content(4096):
        b += chunk
    d = json.loads(b.decode())