parse a collection of packed JSON documents

packed_json_decoder.py

#!/usr/bin/env python

import json

data = open('database.json').read()
document = True
start = 0
end = None 

while document:
    try:
        document = json.loads(data[start:end])
        print document

        if end > 0:
            start = end
            end = None 
        # only final document loads and also has end set as None
        elif end == None:
            break

    except ValueError as e:
        # first case: if we encountered a true error
        if e.args[0] == 'No JSON object could be decoded': break
        # second case: find where error occurs, that is end of current document
        else: end = start + int(e.args[0].
                                          split('column')[1].strip().
                                          split(' ')[0]) 
        continue