How to iterate through this nested dictionary within a list using for loop

Question

I have a list of nested dictionaries that I want to get specific values and put into a dictionary like this:

vid = [{'a':{'display':'axe', 'desc':'red'}, 'b':{'confidence':'good'}},        
       {'a':{'display':'book', 'desc':'blue'}, 'b':{'confidence':'poor'}},  
       {'a':{'display':'apple', 'desc':'green'}, 'b':{'confidence':'good'}}
      ]

I saw previous questions similar to this, but I still can't get the values such as 'axe' and 'red'. I would like the new dict to have a 'Description', 'Confidence' and other columns with the values from the nested dict.

I have tried this for loop:

    new_dict = {}

    for x in range(len(vid)):
       for y in vid[x]['a']:
           desc = y['desc']
           new_dict['Description'] = desc

I got many errors but mostly this error: TypeError: string indices must be integers

Can someone please help solve how to get the values from the nested dictionary?

@Tserenjamts I don't think it's a duplicate since my problem is a nested dictionary within a list, and also because I need it to be in dictionary form since I would want to export it into a csv later. I would also want it to be iterated through the nested dicts using a for loop since there are multiple data values that I need :) — nam
– nam, Commented Oct 30, 2019 at 6:39

Ollie · Accepted Answer · 2019-10-30 07:19:57Z

2

You don't need to iterate through the keys in the dictionary (the inner for-loop), just access the value you want.

vid = [{'a':{'display':'axe', 'desc':'red'}, 'b':{'confidence':'good'} },
       {'a':{'display':'book', 'desc':'blue'}, 'b':{'confidence':'poor'}},  
       {'a':{'display':'apple', 'desc':'green'}, 'b':{'confidence':'good'}}
      ]

new_dict = {}

list_of_dicts = []

for x in range(len(vid)):
   desc = vid[x]['a']['desc']
   list_of_dicts.append({'desc': desc})

edited Oct 30, 2019 at 7:19

answered Oct 30, 2019 at 2:48

Ollie

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6 Comments

nam Over a year ago

I tried this already but it only returned the last item from the 'desc'. I want it to iterate through all the items from 'desc'. Any idea how?

Ollie Over a year ago

what do you want the dictionary to look like?

nam Over a year ago

I want it to have all the values from each 'desc','confidence' etc from each of the outer dict (0,1,2,3....). Is that possible?

Ollie Over a year ago

obviously new_dict = {'desc': 'red', 'desc': 'blue', 'desc': 'green'} is impossible, what do you want?

nam Over a year ago

I would like the end product to be a csv with 3 columns(Description, Display, Confidence) that has all the values from each 0,1,2,3..... To get this, I would need to create a dict am I right? What do you propose?

|

nam · Accepted Answer · 2019-10-30 03:59:45Z

1

I have found a temporary solution for this. I decided to use the pandas dataframe instead.

df = pd.DataFrame(columns = ['Desc'])

for x in range(len(vid)):
    desc = vid[x]['a']['desc']
    df.loc[len(df)] = [desc]

answered Oct 30, 2019 at 3:59

nam

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Comments

Jjj · Accepted Answer · 2019-10-30 06:52:11Z

0

so you want to write this to csv later so pandas will help you a lot for this problem using pandas you can get the desc by

import pandas as pd
new_dict = {}
df = pd.DataFrame(vid)
for index, row in df.iterrows() : 
     new_dict['description'] = row['a']['desc']


                                       a                       b
          0      {'display': 'axe', 'desc': 'red'}  {'confidence': 'good'}
          1    {'display': 'book', 'desc': 'blue'}  {'confidence': 'poor'}
          2  {'display': 'apple', 'desc': 'green'}  {'confidence': 'good'}

this is how dataframe looks like a b are column of the dataframe and your nested dicts are rows of dataframe

answered Oct 30, 2019 at 6:52

Jjj

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Comments

U13-Forward · Accepted Answer · 2019-10-30 07:19:48Z

0

Try using this list comprehension:

d = [{'Description': i['a']['desc'], 'Confidence': i['b']['confidence']} for i in vid]
print(d)

edited Oct 30, 2019 at 7:19

answered Oct 30, 2019 at 2:43

U13-Forward

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1 Comment

nam Over a year ago

Unfortunately the vid is a list and it showed me AttributeError: 'list' object has no attribute 'values'

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