Is there a way to take a list of strings and create a JSON file, where both the key and value are list items? - json

Question

I am creating a python script that can read scanned, and tabular .pdfs and extract some important data and insert it into a JSON to later be implemented into a SQL database (I will also be developing the DB as a project for learning MongoDB).
Basically, my issue is I have never worked with any JSON files before but that was the format I was recommended to output to. The scraping script works, the pre-processing could be a lot cleaner, but for now it works. The issue I run into is the keys, and values are in the same list, and some of the values because they had a decimal point are two different list items. Not really sure where to even start.
I don't really know where to start, I suppose since I know what the indexes of the list are I can easily assign keys and values, but then it may not be applicable to any .pdf, that is the script cannot be coded explicitly.
import PyPDF2 as pdf2
import textract
with "TestSpec.pdf" as filename:
pdfFileObj = open(filename, 'rb')
pdfReader = pdf2.pdfFileReader(pdfFileObj)
num_pages = pdfReader.numpages
count = 0
text = ""
while count < num_pages:
pageObj = pdfReader.getPage(0)
count += 1
text += pageObj.extractText()
if text != "":
text = text
else:
text = textract.process(filename, method="tesseract", language="eng")
def cleanText(x):
'''
This function takes the byte data extracted from scanned PDFs, and cleans it of all
unnessary data.
Requires re
'''
stringedText = str(x)
cleanText = stringedText.replace('\n','')
splitText = re.split(r'\W+', cleanText)
caseingText = [word.lower() for word in splitText]
cleanOne = [word for word in caseingText if word != 'n']
dexStop = cleanOne.index("od260")
dexStart = cleanOne.index("sheet")
clean = cleanOne[dexStart + 1:dexStop]
return clean
cleanText = cleanText(text)
This is the current output
['n21', 'feb', '2019', 'nsequence', 'lacz', 'rp', 'n5', 'gat', 'ctc', 'tac', 'cat', 'ggc', 'gca', 'cat', 'ttc', 'ccc', 'gaa', 'aag', 'tgc', '3', 'norder', 'no', '15775199', 'nref', 'no', '207335463', 'n25', 'nmole', 'dna', 'oligo', '36', 'bases', 'nproperties', 'amount', 'of', 'oligo', 'shipped', 'to', 'ntm', '50mm', 'nacl', '66', '8', 'xc2', 'xb0c', '11', '0', '32', '6', 'david', 'cook', 'ngc', 'content', '52', '8', 'd260', 'mmoles', 'kansas', 'state', 'university', 'biotechno', 'nmolecular', 'weight', '10', '965', '1', 'nnmoles']
and we want the output as a JSON setup like
{"Date | 21feb2019", "Sequence ID: | lacz-rp", "Sequence 5'-3' | gat..."}
and so on. Just not sure how to do that.
here is a screenshot of the data from my sample pdf
So, i have figured out some of this. I am still having issues with grabbing the last 3rd of the data i need without explicitly programming it in. but here is what i have so far. Once i have everything working then i will worry about optimizing it and condensing.
# for PDF reading
import PyPDF2 as pdf2
import textract
# for data preprocessing
import re
from dateutil.parser import parse
# For generating the JSON file array
import json
# This finds and opens the pdf file, reads the data, and extracts the data.
filename = "*.pdf"
pdfFileObj = open(filename, 'rb')
pdfReader = pdf2.PdfFileReader(pdfFileObj)
text = ""
pageObj = pdfReader.getPage(0)
text += pageObj.extractText()
# checks if extracted data is in string form or picture, if picture textract reads data.
# it then closes the pdf file
if text != "":
text = text
else:
text = textract.process(filename, method="tesseract", language="eng")
pdfFileObj.close()
# Converts text to string from byte data for preprocessing
stringedText = str(text)
# Removed escaped lines and replaced them with actual new lines.
formattedText = stringedText.replace('\\n', '\n').lower()
# Slices the long string into a workable piece (only contains useful data)
slice1 = formattedText[(formattedText.index("sheet") + 10): (formattedText.index("secondary") - 2)]
clean = re.sub('\n', " ", slice1)
clean2 = re.sub(' +', ' ', clean)
# Creating the PrimerData dictionary
with open("PrimerData.json",'w') as file:
primerDataSlice = clean[clean.index("molecular"): -1]
primerData = re.split(": |\n", primerDataSlice)
primerKeys = primerData[0::2]
primerValues = primerData[1::2]
primerDict = {"Primer Data": dict(zip(primerKeys,primerValues))}
# Generatring the JSON array "Primer Data"
primerJSON = json.dumps(primerDict, ensure_ascii=False)
file.write(primerJSON)
# Grabbing the date (this has just the date, so json will have to add date.)
date = re.findall('(\d{2}[\/\- ](\d{2}|january|jan|february|feb|march|mar|april|apr|may|may|june|jun|july|jul|august|aug|september|sep|october|oct|november|nov|december|dec)[\/\- ]\d{2,4})', clean2)

Answer 1

Without input data it is difficult to give you working code. A minimal working example with input would help. As for JSON handling, python dictionaries can dump to json easily. See examples here.
https://docs.python-guide.org/scenarios/json/
Get a json string from a dictionary and write to a file. Figure out how to parse the text into a dictionary.
import json
d = {"Date" : "21feb2019", "Sequence ID" : "lacz-rp", "Sequence 5'-3'" : "gat"}
json_data = json.dumps(d)
print(json_data)
# Write that data to a file

Answer 2

So, I did figure this out, the problem was really just that because of the way my pre-processing was pulling all the data into a single list wasn't really that great of an idea considering that the keys for the dictionary never changed.
Here is the semi-finished result for making the Dictionary and JSON file.
# Collect the sequence name
name = clean2[clean2.index("Sequence") + 11: clean2.index("Sequence") + 19]
# Collecting Shipment info
ordered = input("Who placed this order? ")
received = input("Who is receiving this order? ")
dateOrder = re.findall(
r"(\d{2}[/\- ](\d{2}|January|Jan|February|Feb|March|Mar|April|Apr|May|June|Jun|July|Jul|August|Aug|September|Sep|October|Oct|November|Nov|December|Dec)[/\- ]\d{2,4})",
clean2)
dateReceived = date.today()
refNo = clean2[clean2.index("ref.No. ") + 8: clean2.index("ref.No.") + 17]
orderNo = clean2[clean2.index("Order No.") +
10: clean2.index("Order No.") + 18]
# Finding and grabbing the sequence data. Storing it and then finding the
# GC content and melting temp or TM
bases = int(clean2[clean2.index("bases") - 3:clean2.index("bases") - 1])
seqList = [line for line in clean2 if re.match(r'^[AGCT]+$', line)]
sequence = "".join(i for i in seqList[:bases])
def gc_content(x):
count = 0
for i in x:
if i == 'G' or i == 'C':
count += 1
else:
count = count
return round((count / bases) * 100, 1)
gc = gc_content(sequence)
tm = mt.Tm_GC(sequence, Na=50)
moleWeight = round(mw(Seq(sequence, generic_dna)), 2)
dilWeight = float(clean2[clean2.index("ug/OD260:") +
10: clean2.index("ug/OD260:") + 14])
dilution = dilWeight * 10
primerDict = {"Primer Data": {
"Sequence": sequence,
"Bases": bases,
"TM (50mM NaCl)": tm,
"% GC content": gc,
"Molecular weight": moleWeight,
"ug/0D260": dilWeight,
"Dilution volume (uL)": dilution
},
"Shipment Info": {
"Ref. No.": refNo,
"Order No.": orderNo,
"Ordered by": ordered,
"Date of Order": dateOrder,
"Received By": received,
"Date Received": str(dateReceived.strftime("%d-%b-%Y"))
}}
# Generating the JSON array "Primer Data"
with open("".join(name) + ".json", 'w') as file:
primerJSON = json.dumps(primerDict, ensure_ascii=False)
file.write(primerJSON)