Python - Dictionaries

Dictionaries are the structures which holds the data in key - value pair format. For example, key can be student
id and value can be student object corresponding to that student id. It allows faster access to the object as
compared to the elements stored as part of list.

Dictionaries are more general form of the lists. They are more readable and one does not to keep the index in
mind while accessing it. For example, a list of months is available, in order to access the October month, one
need to keep its index in mind. Also if days of those months also needs to be referred, then another list needs
to be maintained.

In [ ]:

month_list = ['Jan', 'Feb', 'Mar', 'Apr', "May", 'Jun', 'Jul', "Aug", 'Sep', 'Oct', 'Nov',
month_list[9] # accessing Oct

In [ ]:

days_list = [31, 28, 31, 30, 31, 30, 31, 31, 30, 31, 30, 31]
days_list[9] # accessing days of Oct

Dictionaries simplifies this job by maintaing 'month names' as keys and days of months as values.

Creation of Dictionaries
It can be created with curly braces.

In [ ]:

empty_dict = {}
empty_dict

It can have key value pairs within it. Each key is separated from its value by a colon ":". Commas separate the
items, and the whole dictionary is enclosed in curly braces.

In [ ]:

my_dict = {'Jan': 31, 'Feb':28, 'March': 31, 'Apr':30} # keys are strings
my_dict

Key can be string, numbers or tuples, basically it has to be immutable object.

In [ ]:

dict2 = {1:'Jan', 2:'Feb', 3:'March', 4:'April'} # keys are numbers

In [ ]:

dict3 = {(1, 2019) : 'Jan', (2, 2019):'Feb'} #keys are tuples

Type can be checked by type() method.

In [ ]:

type(my_dict)

Number of items in dictionary can be found out by len() method.

In [ ]:

len(my_dict)

dict() function can also be used to create dictionary. List of tuples which actually contains the key value pairs
needs to be provided as the input.

In [ ]:

d = dict([('A',1), ('B',2), ('C',3)])

Accessing keys and values

All keys can be accessed via keys() method.

my_dict = {'Jan': 31, 'Feb':28, 'March': 31, 'Apr':30} # keys are strings
my_dict

In [ ]:

my_dict.keys() # get all the keys of dictionary object

All values can be accessed via values() method.

In [ ]:

my_dict.values() # get all the values of dictionary object

All key-value pairs can be accessed by items() method.

In [ ]:

my_dict.items()

Individual value can be found out by using the key associated with it.

In [ ]:

my_dict['Jan'] # access number of days associated with 'Jan'

In [ ]:

my_dict['Apr'] # access number of days associated with 'Apr'

In [ ]:

my_dict['xyz'] # access number of days associated with 'xyz' , error as key is not present

In [ ]:

my_dict.get('xyz') # even if key is not present in the dictionary does not throw error

In [ ]:

my_dict.get('Apr') # access number of days associated with 'Apr'

'in' and 'not in' can be used to determine key is present in dictionary or not

In [ ]:

'Apr' in my_dict # check whether entry with key 'Apr' is present or not
In [ ]:

'XYZ' in my_dict # check whether entry with key 'XYZ' is present or not

Looping

One can iterate over the entries in Dictionaries.

In [ ]:

#Dictionary with Roman numerals

In [ ]:

for key in letter_dict.keys(): # iterate over keys

In [ ]:

for value in letter_dict.values(): # iterate over values

In [ ]:

for key in letter_dict.keys(): #access keys and values

Operations on dictionary

Entry (i.e. key value pair) can be added to dictionary in following manner :

In [ ]:

my_dict['May'] = 31
my_dict

Key values can be modified using the assignment operator.

In [ ]:

my_dict['May'] # current number of days associated with May is 31

In [ ]:

my_dict['May'] = 25 # change it to 25
my_dict['May']

Entry can be removed from dictionary by using the del().

my_dict # Key 'May' present in dictionary

In [ ]:

del(my_dict['May']) #key 'May' is removed from the dictionary

Dictionary with complex object as values

The value can be a complex object like list itself.

In [ ]:

#Cretae a employee database with emp id as key and list of employees where each value in li
emp_data = { 1:['1','Emp A', 34] , 2:['2','Emp B', 35], 3:['3','Emp C', 36]}

print(emp_data)

Add new employee in the database

In [ ]:

new_emp = ['4', 'Emp D', 45] #create employee

Existing employee details can be modified.

In [ ]:

emp_data # look at current employees

In [ ]:

emp_data[2] = ['2', 'Emp B modified', 67] # alter the second employee

In [ ]:

emp_data # look at modified employees

Individual employee details can also be accessed.

In [ ]:

emp_data[2][0] # access id of second employee

emp_data[2][1] # name of second employee

In [ ]:

emp_data[2][2] # access age of second employee

Exercise
Q1. Write a program that asks user to enter the 5 product names and prices. Store all of these in a dictionary
with keys are product names and prices are values. Then allow the user to input the product name and print the
corresponding price of the product.

In [ ]:

#Try it here

Q2. Create a dictionary where keys are name of months and days are values.

(a) Ask the user to input a month name and use the dictionary to tell how many days are in that month.

(b) Print out all the keys in alphabetical order.

In [ ]:

#Try it here

Q3. Ask user 5 times to enter a team name and how many times the team own and how many they lost. Store
the information in a dictionary where the keys are team names and values are lists of form [wins, lossess].

(a) Using this dictionary, allow the user to enter a team name and print out the teams winning percentage.

(b) Using this dictionary, create a list whose entries are the number of wins of each team.

In [ ]:

#Try it here