Processing JSON Files Exceeding Memory Limits

When dealing with massive JSON files that surpass your system's available memory, loading the entire file into a Python dictionary becomes infeasible. This problem arises because traditional JSON parsing approaches, such as json.load(), attempt to read the entire file at once, resulting in a MemoryError.

Solution Using Data Streaming

To address this issue, employ a JSON streaming approach. By working with a data stream, you can process the JSON file incrementally, avoiding the need to load the full file into memory.

Introducing ijson

A popular library for JSON streaming is ijson. This module allows you to read JSON data as a stream, parsing it in chunks and providing the parsed data as an iterator. By leveraging ijson, you can process large JSON files without consuming excessive memory.

Other Considerations

json-streamer: This library, as suggested by Kashif, employs a similar streaming mechanism for JSON processing.

bigjson: Henrik Heino's bigjson library enables mapping JSON data directly into memory without loading it fully.

By employing streaming approaches and utilizing appropriate libraries, you can effectively process JSON files that exceed your system's memory constraints.