Please study the following to get you started. It looks like JSON output that you are dealing, which is good. I added a ", to the "body"-line, because I assume that you botched that when giving an example.
```python #!/usr/bin/env python import json output = ''' { "error" : { "body" : "The requested device is currently not online.", "detail" : "Make sure to connect the device", "event" : 123456, "header" : "Device Unavailable (123456)" } } ''' # help(json.loads) parsed = json.loads(output) if type(parsed) == dict: if type(parsed['error']) == dict: print("yay!") ``` HTH -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list