This simple package can be used to repair a broken json file. To know all cases in which this package will work, check out the unit test.

Inspired by https://github.com/josdejong/jsonrepair with contributions by GPT-4

[UPDATE] OpenAI just released a new update with JSON mode in function calling. So I guess if you use OpenAI with function calling you don't need this.

I was using GPT a lot and there is no sure fire way to get structured output out of it. You can ask for a JSON output or use the Functions paradigm, either way the documentation from OpenAI clearly states that it might not return a valid JSON. Luckily, the mistakes GPT makes are simple enough to be fixed without destroying the content. I searched for a lightweight python package but couldn't find any.

So I wrote this one.

You can look how I used it by checking out this demo: https://huggingface.co/spaces/mangiucugna/difficult-conversations-bot/

from json_repair import repair_json
try:
    good_json_string = repair_json(bad_json_string)
except Exception:
    # Not even this library could fix this JSON

You can use this library to completely replace json.loads():

import json_repair
try:
    decoded_object = json_repair.loads(json_string)
except Exception:
    # Manage Exception

or just

import json_repair
try:
    decoded_object = json_repair.repair_json(json_string, return_objects=True)
except Exception:
    # Manage Exception

This module will parse the JSON file following the BNF definition:

<json> ::= <primitive> | <container>

<primitive> ::= <number> | <string> | <boolean>
; Where:
; <number> is a valid real number expressed in one of a number of given formats
; <string> is a string of valid characters enclosed in quotes
; <boolean> is one of the literal strings 'true', 'false', or 'null' (unquoted)

<container> ::= <object> | <array>
<array> ::= '[' [ <json> *(', ' <json>) ] ']' ; A sequence of JSON values separated by commas
<object> ::= '{' [ <member> *(', ' <member>) ] '}' ; A sequence of 'members'
<member> ::= <string> ': ' <json> ; A pair consisting of a name, and a JSON value

If something is wrong (a missing parantheses or quotes for example) it will use a few simple heuristics to fix the JSON string:

• Add the missing parentheses if the parser believes that the array or object should be closed
• Quote strings or add missing single quotes
• Adjust whitespaces and remove line breaks

I am sure some corner cases will be missing, if you have examples please open an issue or even better push a PR

Just create a virtual environment with requirements.txt, the setup uses pre-commit to make sure all tests are run

You will need owner access to this repository

• Edit pyproject.toml and update the version number appropriately using semver notation
• Run python -m build
• Commit and push all changes to the repository before continuing or the next steps will fail
• Create a new release in Github, making sure to tag all the issues solved and contributors. Create the new tag, same as the one in the build configuration
• Once the release is created, a new Github Actions workflow will start to publish on Pypi, make sure it didn't fail

If you need some good Custom Instructions (System Message) to improve your chatbot responses try https://gist.github.com/mangiucugna/7ec015c4266df11be8aa510be0110fe4