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Getting a key's value in a nested dictionary
Asked 2 years, 2 months ago Active 5 months ago Viewed 17k times
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1 of 8 10/20/2020, 3:22 PM
python - Getting a key's value in a nested dictionary - Code Review Stack... https://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/201754/getting-a-keys-v...
I just found a now deleted question on Stack Overflow and solved the problem. The OP was
asking for a way to get all the values contained by all 'PLU' keys. I solved it this way but
10 because I am a newbie in python I was wondering if it would be an optimal/better way of doing
this, maybe using iterators, I don't know.
Result should be:
1
234
32
33
334
61
def getPLU(data):
for item in data:
if type(data[item]) == dict:
getPLU(data[item])
else :
if item == 'PLU':
print (data[item])
pass
def Main():
times = 0
Menu = {
'PLU' : '234',
'Salad': {
'salad': {
'ceaser':{
'PLU': '32'
},
'italian':{
'PLU': '33'
}
}
},
'Dessert': {
'cookie': {
'PLU': '334',
'NAME': 'cookie ',
}
},
'Appetizer': {
'extra sauce': {
'PLU': '61',
'NAME': 'extra sauce',
}
}
}
getPLU(data=Menu)
#print (getPLU(Menu))
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Welcome to Code Review! I hope you get some good answers. – Phrancis Aug 15 '18 at 20:45
Thanks for the welcome and thanks for all the answers posted. Also thanks for the corrections made
to the question. – Nestor Aug 16 '18 at 16:39
4 Answers Active Oldest Votes
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Great job so far! I have a few suggestions for your code:
6 1. Avoid writing functions with side effects such as printed output. Side effects make a
function much less reusable. Instead, you may return a generator that yield s the next
entry. This gives the caller maximum control over what to do with the result set: print it,
iterate one by one, just get the first few items without searching the entire structure, etc.
2. Consider adhering more strictly to Python naming conventions. For example, functions
should be lower_camel_cased. Since your function returns multiple PLUs, the function
name seems more accurately written as get_plus . You can remove the pass keyword in
your function and pay close attention to spacing, for example in the print (data[item])
function call and your else : block.
3. Clean up lines like
else :
if item == 'PLU':
print (data[item])
Which is logically equivalent to:
elif item == 'PLU':
print(data[item])
4. Use data.items() to iterate through your dictionary's keys and values rather than only
keys. This allows cleaner syntax to access values.
5. Make your function more general for maximum reusability. Fetching a list of values by key
from a dictionary is a task that should work for any key. Why not make "PLU" a search
parameter? If you want to keep the original get_plus version, write both functions and
have get_plus wrap the generalized version.
6. isinstance may be a more accurate choice than type if you wish to allow collection
subclasses of dictionary to use your function.
Here's my version for consideration:
def find_by_key(data, target):
for key, value in data.items():
if isinstance(value, dict):
yield from find_by_key(value, target)
elif key == target:
yield value
def main():
menu = {
'PLU' : '234',
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Your code is well organized and read well but there are a few oddities:
5 1. Read PEP8 and apply official coding conventions so that your code read like Python
code;
2. Remove that useless pass ;
3. Don't print your results in the function that compute them, instead return them to the
caller so your function is reusable (in your case, yield ing them might be more
appropriate);
4. Don't check for a specific type using type : favor isinstance ; better would be to not check
for a type at all but for a feature: call the items method of what would appear to be a dict
and work with that, discard anything else that raise an AttributeError ;
5. A more generic function would accept the key to search for as parameter;
6. A recursive approach cannot handle arbitrary large structures due to the recursion limit,
an iterative approach can (even though it would rarely be an issue in practice).
Proposed improvements:
def retrieve_nested_value(mapping, key_of_interest):
mappings = [mapping]
while mappings:
mapping = mappings.pop()
try:
items = mapping.items()
except AttributeError:
# we didn't store a mapping earlier on so just skip that value
continue
for key, value in items:
if key == key_of_interest:
yield value
else:
# type of the value will be checked in the next loop
mappings.append(value)
def main():
menu = {...}
for plu in retrieve_nested_value(menu, 'PLU'):
print(plu)
if __name__ == '__main__':
main()
answered Aug 15 '18 at 22:21
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Nice recursive solution! Just a few suggestions:
3 You should structure you entire code better and set up individual functions to set up the
menu and get the prices, not do it all in main .
Ideally, you would add a docstring that describes what your function does and what the
parameters are. I personally like the numpy docstring style.
Function names should be snake_case , not CamelCase , so it would be get_plu(data)
data is a very generic term, you should use something more descriptive such as menu
If you want the type comparison to also work for inherited types , you should use
isinstance(data[item], dict) instead of type(data[item]) == dict
Remove the space in print (data[item])
Your function should return something meaningful or None . Perhaps you want to also save
the prices in a list or set, or you want to at least return 0 , which commonly means that the
function ran successfully.
answered Aug 15 '18 at 22:02
Daniel Lenz
368 1 7
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If you have mixtures of dict and list in your nested dict, like:
1 d = {"a": 3, 'b': [4, 5, {"c": 56}]}
then use:
def find_by_key(data, target):
for k, v in data.items():
if k == target:
return v
elif isinstance(v, dict):
return find_by_key(v, target)
elif isinstance(v, list):
for i in v:
if isinstance(i, dict):
return find_by_key(i, target)
Output:
find_by_key(d, "c")
56
edited May 13 at 19:35 answered May 13 at 19:05
Santee
11 3
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8 of 8 10/20/2020, 3:22 PM
