Flatten Nested Booking JSON With Python

Airbnb internal workflows may receive booking metadata as nested JSON. Given a decoded payload from an Airbnb booking workflow, transform each booking into one flat record with normalized text, numeric prices, and stay totals.

Requirements

1. Process every object in payload["bookings"] and preserve input order.
2. Trim leading and trailing whitespace from identifiers, collapse repeated whitespace in names and cities, lowercase statuses and emails, and title-case cities.
3. Convert price strings such as "\$1,200.50" or " 30 " to Python floats.
4. Use the first and last night dates as start_date and end_date. The nights are already in chronological order.
5. Treat missing cleaning or service fees as 0.0.
6. Return one flat dictionary per booking with these keys: booking_id, status, guest_name, guest_email, listing_id, city, start_date, end_date, nights, nightly_total, fees_total, and grand_total.

The function receives a Python dictionary, not a JSON string. Do not use third-party libraries.

Formal Specification

Input: payload, a dictionary containing a nonempty bookings list. Each booking contains the nested fields used below. Price values are strings, and each booking has at least one night.

Output: A list of flat dictionaries in the same order as the input bookings. Round no values; retain normal Python floating-point arithmetic.