Misleading error messages when opening inexistent json file

[datapythonista]

When opening a json file that doesn't exist with read_json, we get a ValueError with error messages like:

>>> import pandas
>>> pandas.read_json('no_file.json')
ValueError: Unexpected character found when decoding 'null'

>>> pandas.read_json('a_dir/no_file.json')
ValueError: Expected object or value

It'd probably be better to raise an exception like:

FileNotFoundError: No such file: 'no_file.json'

[mohitanand001]

Hi, @datapythonista can I take this up?

[datapythonista]

sure, thanks

[deepandas11]

Hi! Would like to work on this if it is still open.

[sathyz]

take

[kevin-meyers]

Hey @sathyz if you don't finish it by the end of the month I think I'll give it a shot.

[devjeetr]

take

[vampypandya]

@devjeetr Is this issue still open? Can I give a shot?

[cheungje]

Hi, I would like to to take this issue if it's still not resolved.

[cheungje]

take

[mohitanand001]

Anyone willing to take this up might want to go through this thread once.
#29104
I had taken this 2 years back, but it was closed after some discussion.

[janosh]

Would a PR for this still be welcomed? Reading #29104 makes it sounds like the conclusion there was no good solution exists but tbh I don't understand why not.

[MarcoGorelli]

If I've understood the discussion correctly, then I think that at least for extensioned json files, it should be possible to assume user intent and raise an informative error message if the file doesn't exist

[janosh]

@MarcoGorelli So if I submit a PR that raises FNFError

if (
    isinstance(filepath_or_buffer, str)
    and filepath_or_buffer.lower().endswith(('.json', '.json.gz', '.json.bz2'))
    and not isfile(filepath_or_buffer)
)

that would be acceptable? Seems like a definite improvement over current behavior to me.

[MarcoGorelli]

TBH that would look good to me, I often run into this error when trying to read json files - cc @gfyoung @WillAyd any further thoughts on this?