BUG: cannot use category dtype in pandas read_json method

[alison199]

• I have confirmed this bug exists on the latest version of pandas.

import pandas as pd

print(pd.version)

1.2.2

Problem described in other places:

1. pd.read_json ignores 'category' dtypes #21892
2. BUG: Using categorical dtype in read_json #25573
3. Fix read_json category dtype #30728

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Code Sample, a copy-pastable example

import pandas as pd

content = '[{"score": 1,"color":"red"},{"score":10,"color":"green"}]'
dtypes_dict = {'score': 'uint8', 'colour': 'category'}

data_frame = pd.read_json(content, dtype=dtypes_dict)
print(data_frame.dtypes)

Problem description

When I run the above, I get the following dtypes for the dataframe columns:

score uint8
color object

Expected Output

score uint8
color category

[jreback]

duplicate of #21892