Dictionary from String?

[Greg Lindstrom]

Is it possible to create a dictionary from a string value?  Something along
these lines (but that works):

>>> mystring = "{'name':'greg','hatsize':'7 5/8'}"
>>> mystring
"{'name':'greg','hatsize':'7 5/8'}"
>>> dict(mystring)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <fragment>
ValueError: dictionary update sequence element #0 has length 1; 2 is
required
>>>

I would like to return an undetermined (at call time) number of fields from
a postgres database (only 1 record) for a given request.  My thought is that
I could build a dictionary in the form of a string, return the string and
then convert the string value to a dictionary.  I can do that now, but I
have to parse the string and then build the dictionary.  Any thoughts or
help you could provide would be appreciated.

--greg
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