Extract a value from within a nested key python - python

I need to extract out a specific value from within a nested key in python
for example from the below I want to extract out the Start from the key Params
{'Key': 'Params', 'Value': `'{"Shut":false,"Remove":false,"SnapshotRequired":false,"Start":"Never","End":"Never"}'}
This is as far as I have got
for tag in i["Tags"]:
if 'Params' in tag['Key']:
then I can get the value but this is the whole string.

You can use dict.get(key) method to get a value of the key you specify in get(), where dict is variable which stores your dictionary.
Also you can use dict[key]. It gives the same result.
In your case, for example, dict['Key'] will return 'Params',
dict['Value'] will return nested dictionary.

Ok after fixing an issue in the string, an extra '`' you can simply make dict(string) to make it a valid python dict, which then accepts nested dicts as values.
also have in mine that "false" is not a valid python type, so you would have to make it a string or convert to python format which is False with the capital F
and finally do:
variable['Value']['Start']
test = dict({'Key': 'Params', 'Value': {"Shut":False,"Remove":False,"SnapshotRequired":False,"Start":"Never","End":"Never"}})
test['Value']['Start']

Related

Dictionary that doesn't exist returning name of string, how to skip this Python

I have a dictionary that holds different value and id's.
The first index in the dictionary does not hold the 'id' dictionary, but the second index does
The problem I am having is when I print:
return[0]['values']['id']
It returns
'id'
Because there is no such dictionary in the first index
The second index
return[1]['values']['id']
The 'id' dictionary does exist so returns
[{"id": "4651234", "type":"instant"}]
I'm trying to create a list of only the id values that exist, how do I get it to skip the all the indexes where the 'id' dictionary does not exist? Rather than stop the program and print the string 'id'.
You can just loop and use a if statement to check if the id exists or not :
id_list = []
for key in return:
if return[key]['values']['id'] != 'id':
id_list.append(return[key]['values']['id'])
(Btw you should avoid naming your variables with name like return or any other keyword that can have a signification for the language)
you can if the returned value it is a list or a string
if isinstance(return[0]['values']['id'],list):
#process the data
elif isinstance(return[0]['values']['id'],str):
#do nothing
Having said that, a couple of recommendations: I assume that you wrote it as an example but, just in case, is not possible to have "return" as the name of the variable since it is a reserved word.
Another point is that if the same call returns different things (i.e. the first returns a str, the second a list with a dictionary in it, etc), it may be an indication that the data needs some cleaning before trying to access it. Otherwise you may end up with nasty results and you won't know where they are coming from.

How do i access the sub details in the JSON using python?

the python program that i am writing calls to an api that returns this json:
Code Output
How do i access the subdetails? When i run the .keys() it only lists those three top levels. I want to be able to get specific items, e.g. "Utility"
I've tried several solutions but none parse correctly. I have tried calling the list inside the dictionary, to no avail. Originally i thought it was a dictionary inside of a dictionary, but Python thinks its a list nested into a dictionary.
Any help would be appreciated!
keys() function only returns the keys of dictionary, so it you call keys(), it will only return the three result. The "subdetails" you are referring to are the values of those keys. For key "SUMMARY" as an example, its value is a list instead of dict (note the "[" after the key). However, the list only has a single element. This is quite common in json. To retrive "Utility", all you need to do is data['SUMMARY'][0]['Utility']
Maybe to help you understand the data structure better, call the "values()" and "items()" function to see what it returns.
Since it's a dict of lists of dicts, simply use an index of 0 to access the first item of the list if there is always only one item in each list. For example, if your JSON object is stored as variable data, then the value of Utility can be accessed with data['SUMMARY'][0]['Utility'].

Error Changing Dictionary Keys

I've two defaultdicts I eventually want to merge, but first I need to make their keys match. According to some threads I've seen here, I can use pop() to replace keys in a dictionary. But that only updates the existing dictionary, whereas I want to create a new dictionary with the new keys. So something like:
existing_dict_one -> new_dict_one
This is what I've so far:
def split_tabs(x):
"""
Function to split tab-separated strings, used to break up the keys that are separated by tabs.
"""
return x.split('\t')
def create_dict(old_dict):
"""
Function to create a new defaultdict from an existing defaultdict, just with
different keys.
"""
new_dict = old_dict.copy() # Create a copy of old_dict to house the new keys, but with the same values.
for key, value in new_dict.iteritems():
umi = split_tabs(key)[0] # Change key to be UMI, which is the 0th index of the tab-delimited key.
# new_key = key.replace(key, umi)
new_dict[umi] = new_dict.pop(key)
return new_dict
However, I'm getting the following error
RuntimeError: dictionary changed size during iteration
and I don't know how to fix it. Does anyone know how to correct it? I'd like to use the variable "umi" as the new key.
I'd like to post the variable "key" and dictionary "old_dict" I'm using for testing this code, but it's messy and takes up a lot of space. So here's a pastebin link that contains them instead.
Note that "umi" comes from variable "key" which is separated by tabs. So I split "key" and get the first object as "umi".
Just use a dict comprehension for this:
new_dict = {split_tabs(key)[0]: value for key, value in old_dict.iteritems()}
Trying to modify a dictionary while iterating over it is not a good idea in general.
If you use .items() instead of .iteritems(), you won't have that problem, because that will just return a list that is disconnected from the dictionary. In python 3 it would be 'list(new_dict.items())`.
Also if there's any possibility that the dictionary values are mutable, you'll have to use copy.deepcopy(old_dict) instead of just old_dict.copy().

How can I access to a dictionary element indexed with a string?

I want to access to an element of a dictionary with a string.
For example, I have a dictionary like this:
data = {"masks": {"id": "valore"}}
I have one string campo="masks,id" I want to split this string with this campo.split(','). I obtain ['masks', 'id'] and with this I want to access to the element data["masks"]["id"].
This dictionary is an example, my dictionaries have more complexity. The point is that I want to access to the element data["masks"]["id"] with an input string "masks,id", or to the element data["masks"] with the string "masks" and to the element data["masks"]["id"]["X"] with the input string "masks,id,X" and so on.
How can I do this?
However, I won't recommend you to use the following method, as python dict is not meant to be accessed the way you want it to be, but since in Python you can change the object type at your own risk, I would like to attach the snippet which would get the work done for you.
So what I do is iterate over the keys and at each iteration fetch the child dictionary is present else put empty dictionary, the .get() method used, returns empty dict if the key was not found.
data = {"masks": {"id": "valore"}}
text = "masks, id"
nested_keys = text.split(", ")
nested_dict = data
for key in nested_keys:
nested_dict = nested_dict.get(key, {})
if (isinstance(nested_dict, str)):
print nested_dict
The point is that you are coming up with requirements that do not match the capability of the python-built-in dictionaries.
If you want to have nested maps that do this kind of automated "splitting" of a single key string like "masks, id, X" then ... you will have to implement that yourself.
In other words: the answer is - the built-in dictionary can't do that for you.
So, the "real" thing to do here: step back and carefully look into your requirements to understand exactly what you want to do; and why you want to do that. And going from there look for the best design to support that.
From an implementation side, I think what you "need" would roughly look like:
check if the provided "key" matches "key1,key2,key3"
if so, split that key into its sub-keys
then check if the "out dictionary" has a value for key1
then check, if the value for key1 is a dictionary
then check if that "inner" dictionary has a value for key2
...
and so on.

List of dictionaries: get() schould loop over list

I know it is easy to implement.
I want a dictionary like class, which takes a list of dictionaries in the constructor.
If you read from this dict by key, the dict-class should check the list of dictionaries and return the first value. If none contains this key KeyError should be thrown like a normal dict.
This dictionary container should be read only for my usage.
You seem to be describing collections.ChainMap, which will be in the next version of Python (3.3, expected to go final later this year). For current/earlier versions of Python, you can copy the implementation from the collections source code.
Not really answer to the question: what if you just define method that merge all dictionaries into one? Why make new class for it?
How to merge: How to merge two Python dictionaries in a single expression?
Varargs: Can a variable number of arguments be passed to a function?
You can easily implement this with this logic.
Iterate over all the dictionaries in the list.
For each dictionary, see if it has the required key by using key in value statement.
If value is found, return the value from the function.
If you have iterated over all dictionaries, and value is not found, Raise KeyError exception.

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