How to read a large json in pandas?

Perhaps, the file you are reading contains multiple json objects rather and than a single json or array object which the methods json.load(json_file) and pd.read_json('review.json') are expecting. These methods are supposed to read files with single json object.

From the yelp dataset I have seen, your file must be containing something like:

{"review_id":"xxxxx","user_id":"xxxxx","business_id":"xxxx","stars":5,"date":"xxx-xx-xx","text":"xyxyxyxyxx","useful":0,"funny":0,"cool":0}
{"review_id":"yyyy","user_id":"yyyyy","business_id":"yyyyy","stars":3,"date":"yyyy-yy-yy","text":"ababababab","useful":0,"funny":0,"cool":0}
....    
....

and so on.

Hence, it is important to realize that this is not single json data rather it is multiple json objects in one file.

To read this data into pandas data frame the following solution should work:

import pandas as pd

with open('review.json') as json_file:      
    data = json_file.readlines()
    # this line below may take at least 8-10 minutes of processing for 4-5 million rows. It converts all strings in list to actual json objects. 
    data = list(map(json.loads, data)) 

pd.DataFrame(data)

Assuming the size of data to be pretty large, I think your machine will take considerable amount of time to load the data into data frame.

If you don't want to use a for-loop, the following should do the trick:

import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_json("foo.json", lines=True)

This will handle the case where your json file looks similar to this:

{"foo": "bar"}
{"foo": "baz"}
{"foo": "qux"}

And will turn it into a DataFrame consisting of a single column, foo, with three rows.

You can read more at Panda's docs