Python urllib2: Receive JSON response from url
Question: I am trying to GET a URL using Python and the response is JSON. However, when
I run

    
    
    import urllib2
    response = urllib2.urlopen('https://api.instagram.com/v1/tags/pizza/media/XXXXXX')
    html=response.read()
    print html
    

The html is of type str and I am expecting a JSON. Is there any way I can
capture the response as JSON or a python dictionary instead of a str.


Answer: If the URL is returning valid JSON-encoded data, use the [`json`
library](http://docs.python.org/2/library/json.html) to decode that:

    
    
    import urllib2
    import json
    
    response = urllib2.urlopen('https://api.instagram.com/v1/tags/pizza/media/XXXXXX')
    data = json.load(response)   
    print data
    

