JSON API / no braces

[marucho21]

Hello:

I'm new to Python. I'm using 3.5.3 on Windows.

Got a bit of a struggle with JSON where the data has no braces {} and only has brackets []. I'm unable to post the link (new to the forum, not a proven non-spammer). The data is from the US Census. The goal is to dump the extract onto a local text file. There are many of files I need to pull, so saving CSVs is not really an option.

Here is a sample of the data

[

• [
  
  • "BIRTHS",
    
  • "YEAR",
    
  • "us"
    
  
  
• 
  ],
  
• 
  [
  • "3969976",
    
  • "2014",
    
  • "1"
    
  
  
  
• 
  ],
  
• 
  [
  • "3998730",
    
  • "2015",
    
  • "1"
    
  
  
  
  
• 
  ],
  

Based on the standard, it seems this is OK, if the data has no key.

The Python syntax below "bombs" when I assign it to the S variable using method "dump" for a string, so "dumps"


>>> import requests
>>> 
>>> response = requests.get("....census api call goes here with key....")
>>> import json


# bombs on this line below, everything above is OK
>>> s=json.dumps(response)


basically this comes back as is not JSON serializable ... from the standards, I understand why this is happening. I can't find a solution that will "serialize it."

Any thoughts would be appreciated. 

Thank you
Mariusz