How to dump a dict to a JSON file?

I have a dict like this:

sample = {'ObjectInterpolator': 1629,  'PointInterpolator': 1675, 'RectangleInterpolator': 2042}

I can't figure out how to dump the dict to a JSON file as showed below:

{      
    "name": "interpolator",
    "children": [
      {"name": "ObjectInterpolator", "size": 1629},
      {"name": "PointInterpolator", "size": 1675},
      {"name": "RectangleInterpolator", "size": 2042}
     ]
}

Is there a pythonic way to do this?

You may guess that I want to generate a d3 treemap.

import json
with open('result.json', 'w') as fp:
    json.dump(sample, fp)

This is an easier way to do it.

In the second line of code the file result.json gets created and opened as the variable fp.

In the third line your dict sample gets written into the result.json!

Combine the answer of @mgilson and @gnibbler, I found what I need was this:

d = {"name":"interpolator",
"children":[{'name':key,"size":value} for key,value in sample.items()]}
j = json.dumps(d, indent=4)
f = open('sample.json', 'w')
print >> f, j
f.close()

It this way, I got a pretty-print json file. The tricks print >> f, j is found from here: http://www.anthonydebarros.com/2012/03/11/generate-json-from-sql-using-python/

d = {"name":"interpolator",
     "children":[{'name':key,"size":value} for key,value in sample.items()]}
json_string = json.dumps(d)

Of course, it's unlikely that the order will be exactly preserved ... But that's just the nature of dictionaries ...

This should give you a start

>>> import json
>>> print json.dumps([{'name': k, 'size': v} for k,v in sample.items()], indent=4)
[
    {
        "name": "PointInterpolator",
        "size": 1675
    },
    {
        "name": "ObjectInterpolator",
        "size": 1629
    },
    {
        "name": "RectangleInterpolator",
        "size": 2042
    }
]

with pretty-print format:

import json

with open(path_to_file, 'w') as file:
    json_string = json.dumps(sample, default=lambda o: o.__dict__, sort_keys=True, indent=2)
    file.write(json_string)

Also wanted to add this (Python 3.7)

import json

with open("dict_to_json_textfile.txt", 'w') as fout:
    json_dumps_str = json.dumps(a_dictionary, indent=4)
    print(json_dumps_str, file=fout)

Update (11-04-2021): So the reason I added this example is because sometimes you can use the print() function to write to files, and this also shows how to use the indentation (unindented stuff is evil!!). However I have recently started learning about threading and some of my research has shown that the print() statement is not always thread-safe. So if you need threading you might want to be careful with this one.

If you're using Path:

example_path = Path('/tmp/test.json')
example_dict = {'x': 24, 'y': 25}
json_str = json.dumps(example_dict, indent=4) + '\n'
example_path.write_text(json_str, encoding='utf-8')