Convert pandas.DataFrame to list of dictionaries in Python

pandas.DataFrame.to_json returns a string (JSON string), not a dictionary. Try to_dict instead:

>>> df
   col1  col2
0     1     3
1     2     4
>>> [df.to_dict(orient='index')]
[{0: {'col1': 1, 'col2': 3}, 1: {'col1': 2, 'col2': 4}}]
>>> df.to_dict(orient='records')
[{'col1': 1, 'col2': 3}, {'col1': 2, 'col2': 4}]

Here is one way:

from collections import OrderedDict

d = {"0":{"yr":2017,"PKID":"58306, 57011","Subject":"ABC","ID":"T001"},"1":{"yr":2018,"PKID":"1234,54321","Subject":"XYZ","ID":"T002"}}

list(OrderedDict(sorted(d.items())).values())

# [{'ID': 'T001', 'PKID': '58306, 57011', 'Subject': 'ABC', 'yr': 2017},
#  {'ID': 'T002', 'PKID': '1234,54321', 'Subject': 'XYZ', 'yr': 2018}]

Note the ordered dictionary is ordered by text string keys, as supplied. You may wish to convert these to integers first before any processing via d = {int(k): v for k, v in d.items()}.