python - How to completely sort a JSON tree alphabetically

Question

I need to do a complete recursive alphabetical ordering on a JSON object in python.

The reason is to be able to diff two json files.

Given this input:

{
    "request-id": "12345",
    "version": "1.1.4",
    "multi": {
            "one": 1, 
            "two": 2.0,
            "Abc": [3,2,4,1, null],
            "three": null,
            "list": [
                        {"lb1": 2.1},
                        {"lb": 2.2}, 
                        {"la": 3}, 
                        {"mix_list": [1, {"bb":1}, 2, {"aa":1}]}]
        }
}

this is the expected output:

{
    "multi": {
        "Abc": [1,2,3,4,null],
        "list": [
            {"la": 3},
            {"lb": 2.2},
            {"lb1": 2.1},
            { "mix_list": [1, 2, {"aa": 1}, {"bb": 1}] }
        ],
        "one": 1,
        "three": null,
        "two": 2.0
    },
    "request-id": "12345",
    "version": "1.1.4"
}

EDIT: to be able to do a diff it should order the array elements too.

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65886581/how-to-completely-sort-a-json-tree-alphabetically

Answer 1

You can use json.dump/s native kwarg sort_keys to do that.

a_json = json.dumps(json_object, sort_keys=True)
print(a_json)