How do I concatenate a list of strings into a single string? For example, given ['this', 'is', 'a', 'sentence'], how do I get "this-is-a-sentence"? For handling a few strings in separate variables, see How do I append one string to another in Python?. More on stackoverflow.com

so, if you want, lets say, to turn ... emptry string, like "", and pass the list to the join method, like this: ... now you know what the .join() method does, let's break down the line of code which uses list comprehensions: ... if you try to read this line of code in "plain english", you'll probably get a better grasp at what's happening here: since you're already familiar with how a "for" loop works in python, note that ... More on reddit.com

Since your input isn't actually valid JSON or Python syntax, it won't work with AST or JSON. You need a custom parser. Fortunately, there is a library called PyParsing that can make quick work. In [2]: import pyparsing as pp ...: ...: LBRACK,RBRACK,COMMA = map(pp.Suppress,"[],") ...: ...: key_value = pp.Group(LBRACK + pp.Word(pp.alphas) + COMMA + pp.Word(pp.nums) + RBRACK + pp.Optional(COMMA)) ...: ...: parser = LBRACK + pp.OneOrMore(key_value) + pp.Optional(COMMA) + RBRACK ...: ...: print(parser.parseString("[[c,1],[a,1],[b,2]]")) ...: print(parser.parseString("[[c,1]]")) [['c', '1'], ['a', '1'], ['b', '2']] [['c', '1']] More on reddit.com

You can't just pass a list of strings. JSON is basically like a python dictionary. You need to format your object as a dictionary e.g.

{"strings":[string1, string2, string3]}

Each string above is a string object.

It's better to pass each string though with a dictionary keyword so it's easier to extract later, or nested dictionaries if you need nester data storage.

Serialising converts python objects to JSON but it has to be something that has similar properties to JSON in terms of structure. Python has that in dictionaries, so we feed it dictionaries. Read up on JSON and how it looks. You'll recognize the similarities instantly.

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