Chapter 6: Dictionaries

BY DR. SABEEHUDDIN HASAN

Dictionaries

 Dictionaries can store an almost limitless amount of information

 You’ll learn how to access the information once it’s in a dictionary and
how to modify that information
 You shall see how to loop through the data in a dictionary
 Understanding dictionaries allows you to model a variety of real-world
objects more accurately
 You’ll be able to create a dictionary representing a person and then
store as much information such as name, age, location and profession
of that person
Dictionaries

A Simple Dictionalien_0 = {'color': 'green', 'points': 5}

 ary
 Consider this dictionary storing information about alien
print(alien_0['color'])
print(alien_0['points'])
 The dictionary alien_0 stores the alien’s color and point value.
 The last two lines access and display that information, as shown here:
green
5
Working with Dictionaries

 A dictionary in Python is a collection of key-value pairs

 Each key is connected to a value, and you can use a key to access the value
associated with that key
 A key’s value can be a number, a string, a list, or even another dictionary
 A dictionary is wrapped in braces {} with a series of key-value pairs inside the braces
alien_0 = {'color': 'green', 'points': 5}
 A key-value pair is a set of values associated with each other
 When you provide a key, Python returns the value associated with that key
 Every key is connected to its value by a colon, and individual key-value pairs are
separated by commas
alien_0 = {'color': 'green'}
Working with Dictionaries

 Accessing Values in a Dictionary

 To get the value associated with a key, give the name of the dictionary and then place the key inside a set
of square brackets
alien_0 = {'color': 'green'}
print(alien_0['color'])
 This returns the value associated with the key 'color' from the dictionary alien_0
green
 You can have an unlimited number of key-value pairs in a dictionary
alien_0 = {'color': 'green', 'points': 5}
new_points = alien_0['points']
print(f"You just earned {new_points} points!")
 Once the dictionary has been defined, we pull the value associated with the key 'points' from the dictionary
You just earned 5 points!
Working with Dictionaries

 Adding New Key-Value Pairs

 Dictionaries are dynamic structures, and you can add new key-value pairs to a dictionary at any time
 Let’s add two new pieces of information to the alien_0 dictionary: the alien’s x- and y-coordinates
alien_0 = {'color': 'green', 'points': 5}
print(alien_0)
alien_0['x_position'] = 0
alien_0['y_position'] = 25
print(alien_0)
 When we print the modified dictionary, we see the two additional key-value pairs
{'color': 'green', 'points': 5}
{'color': 'green', 'points': 5, 'x_position': 0, 'y_position': 25}
 Dictionaries retain the order in which they were defined
Working with Dictionaries

 Starting with an Empty Dictionary

 It’s sometimes convenient, or even necessary, to start with an empty dictionary and then add
each new item to it
 To start filling an empty dictionary, define a dictionary with an empty set of braces and then
add each key-value pair on its own line
alien_0 = {}
alien_0['color'] = 'green'
alien_0['points'] = 5
print(alien_0)
 The result is the dictionary we’ve been using in previous examples
{'color': 'green', 'points': 5}
Working with Dictionaries

 Modifying Values in a Dictionary

 To modify a value in a dictionary, give the name of the dictionary with the key in square
brackets and then the new value you want associated with that key
 `The output shows that the alien has indeed changed from green to yellow:
The alien is green.
The alien is now yellow.
Working with Dictionaries

 See the following example

alien_0 = {'x_position': 0, 'y_position': 25, 'speed': 'medium'}
print(f"Original position: {alien_0['x_position']}")
# Move the alien to the right. Determine how far to move the alien based on its current speed.
if alien_0['speed'] == 'slow':
x_increment = 1
elif alien_0['speed'] == 'medium':
x_increment = 2
else:
x_increment = 3
# The new position is the old position plus the increment.
alien_0['x_position'] = alien_0['x_position'] + x_increment
print(f"New position: {alien_0['x_position']}")
Working with Dictionaries

 Because this is a medium-speed alien, its position shifts two units to the right
Original x-position: 0
New x-position: 2
 This technique is pretty cool: by changing one value in the alien’s dictionary, you can
change the overall behavior of the alien
 For example, to turn this medium-speed alien into a fast alien, you would add this line:
alien_0['speed'] = 'fast'
Working with Dictionaries

 Removing Key-Value Pairs

 When you no longer need a piece of information that’s stored in a dictionary, you can use the
del statement to completely remove a key-value pair
alien_0 = {'color': 'green', 'points': 5}
print(alien_0)
del alien_0['points']
print(alien_0)
 The del statement tells Python to delete the key 'points' from the dictionary alien_0 and to
remove the value associated with that key as well
{'color': 'green', 'points': 5}
{'color': 'green'}
Working with Dictionaries

 A Dictionary of Similar Objects

 You can also use a dictionary to store one kind of information about many objects
 For example, you want to poll a number of people and ask them what their favorite programming
language is
favorite_languages = {
'jen': 'python',
'sarah': 'c',
'edward': 'rust',
'phil': 'python',
}
 We’ve broken a larger dictionary into several lines
 Each key is the name of a person who responded to the poll, and each value is their language choice
Working with Dictionaries

 A Dictionary of Similar Objects

 When you know you’ll need more than one line to define a dictionary, press ENTER after the
opening brace
 Then indent the next line one level (four spaces) and write the first key-value pair, followed
by a comma
 Once you’ve finished defining the dictionary, add a closing brace on a new line after the last
key-value pair
language = favorite_languages['sarah'].title()
print(f"Sarah's favorite language is {language}.")
 We use this syntax to pull Sarah’s favorite language from the dictionary and assign it to the
variable language
Sarah's favorite language is C.
Working with Dictionaries

 Using get() to Access Values

 Using keys in square brackets to retrieve the value want from a dictionary can cause one
potential problem:
 if the key you ask for doesn’t exist, you’ll get an error
alien_0 = {'color': 'green', 'speed': 'slow'}
print(alien_0['points'])
 This causes error
print(alien_0['points'])
~~~~~^^^^^^
KeyError: 'points'
Working with Dictionaries

 Using get() to Access Values

 The get() method requires a key as a first argument
 As a second optional argument, you can pass the value to be returned if the key doesn’t exist
alien_0 = {'color': 'green', 'speed': 'slow'}
point_value = alien_0.get('points', 'No point value assigned.')
print(point_value)
 If the key 'points' exists in the dictionary, you’ll get the value, else we get a clean message
instead of an error
No point value assigned.
Looping Through a Dictionary

 Looping Through All Key-Value Pairs

 The following dictionary would store one person’s username, first name, and last name
user_0 = {
'username': 'efermi',
'first': 'enrico',
'last': 'fermi',
}
 if you want to see everything stored in this user’s dictionary, you can use a for loop
for key, value in user_0.items():
print(f"Key: {key}")
print(f"Value: {value}")
Looping Through a Dictionary

 Looping Through All Key-Value Pairs

 To write a for loop for a dictionary, you create names for the two variables that will hold the key and
value in each key-value pair
 You can choose any names you want for these two variables
for k, v in user_0.items()
 The for loop then assigns each of these pairs to the two variables provided
 In the preceding example, we use the variables to print each key, followed by the associated value
Key: username
Value: efermi
Key: first
Value: enrico
Key: last
Value: fermi
Looping Through a Dictionary

 Looping Through All Key-Value Pairs

 If you loop through the favorite_languages dictionary, you get the name of each person in the
dictionary and their favorite programming language
favorite_languages = {
'jen': 'python',
'sarah': 'c',
'edward': 'rust',
'phil': 'python',
}
for name, language in favorite_languages.items():
print(f"{name.title()}'s favorite language is {language.title()}.")
Looping Through a Dictionary

 Looping Through All Key-Value Pairs

 Now, in just a few lines of code, we can display all of the information from the poll:
Jen's favorite language is Python.
Sarah's favorite language is C.
Edward's favorite language is Rust.
Phil's favorite language is Python.

 This type of looping would work just as well if our dictionary stored the results from polling a
thousand or even a million people
Looping Through a Dictionary

 Looping Through All the Keys in a Dictionary

 The keys() method is useful when you don’t need to work with all of the values in a dictionary
favorite_languages = {
'jen': 'python',
'sarah': 'c',
'edward': 'rust',
'phil': 'python',
}
for name in favorite_languages.keys():
print(name.title())
Looping Through a Dictionary

 Looping Through All the Keys in a Dictionary

 This for loop tells Python to pull all the keys from the dictionary favorite_languages and assign them
one at a time to the variable name
 The output shows the names of everyone who took the poll:
Jen
Sarah
Edward
Phil
 Looping through the keys is actually the default behavior when looping through a dictionary, so this
code would have exactly the same output if you wrote:
for name in favorite_languages:
 rather than:
for name in favorite_languages.keys():
Looping Through a Dictionary

 Looping Through All the Keys in a Dictionary

favorite_languages = {
--snip--
}
friends = ['phil', 'sarah']
for name in favorite_languages.keys():
print(f"Hi {name.title()}.")
if name in friends:
language = favorite_languages[name].title()
print(f"\t{name.title()}, I see you love {language}!")
Looping Through a Dictionary

 Looping Through All the Keys in a Dictionary

 Everyone’s name is printed, but our friends receive a special message:
Hi Jen.
Hi Sarah.
Sarah, I see you love C!
Hi Edward.
Hi Phil.
Phil, I see you love Python!
 You can also use the keys() method to find out if a particular person was polled
if 'erin' not in favorite_languages.keys():
print("Erin, please take our poll!")
Erin, please take our poll!
Looping Through a Dictionary

 Looping Through a Dictionary’s Keys in a Particular Order

 Looping through a dictionary returns the items in the same order they were inserted.
 Sometimes, though, you’ll want to loop through a dictionary in a different order.
favorite_languages = {
'jen': 'python',
'sarah': 'c',
'edward': 'rust',
'phil': 'python',
}
for name in sorted(favorite_languages.keys()):
print(f"{name.title()}, thank you for taking the poll.")
Looping Through a Dictionary

 Looping Through a Dictionary’s Keys in a Particular Order

 The output shows everyone who took the poll, with the names displayed in ascending order:

 Edward, thank you for taking the poll.

 Jen, thank you for taking the poll.
 Phil, thank you for taking the poll.
 Sarah, thank you for taking the poll.
Looping Through a Dictionary

 Looping Through All Values in a Dictionary

 If you are primarily interested in the values that a dictionary contains, you can use the
values() method to return a sequence of values without any keys
favorite_languages = {
'jen': 'python',
'sarah': 'c',
'edward': 'rust',
'phil': 'python',
}
print("The following languages have been mentioned:")
for language in favorite_languages.values():
print(language.title())
Looping Through a Dictionary

 Looping Through All Values in a Dictionary

 The for statement here pulls each value from the dictionary and assigns it to the variable
language.
 When these values are printed, we get a list of all chosen languages:
 The following languages have been mentioned:
Python
C
Rust
Python
Looping Through a Dictionary

 Looping Through All Values in a Dictionary

 This approach pulls all the values from the dictionary without checking for repeats.
 This might work fine with a small number of values, but in a poll with a large number of
respondents, it would result in a very repetitive list.
 To see each language chosen without repetition, we can use a set.
 A set is a collection in which each item must be unique:
print("The following languages have been mentioned:")
for language in set(favorite_languages.values()):
print(language.title())
Looping Through a Dictionary

 Looping Through All Values in a Dictionary

 When you wrap set() around a collection of values that contains duplicate items, Python identifies
the unique items in the collection and builds a set from those items
 The result is a nonrepetitive list of languages that have been mentioned by people taking the poll:
The following languages have been mentioned:
Python
C
Rust
 You can build a set directly using braces and separating the elements with commas:
>>> languages = {'python', 'rust', 'python', 'c'}
>>> languages
{'rust', 'python', 'c'}
Looping Through a Dictionary

 Using while Loop to Traverse All Values in a Dictionary

 For using a while loop, you must first convert the dictionary to a list

key = list (favorite_languages)

print(key)
i=0
while (i < len(key)):
print(key[i],':',favorite_languages[key[i]])
i += 1
Looping Through a Dictionary

 Using while Loop to Traverse All Values in a Dictionary

 The output is as follows

['jen', 'sarah', 'edward', 'phil']

jen : python
sarah : c
edward : rust
phil : python
Nesting

 Nesting happens when you store multiple dictionaries in a list, or a list of items as a
value in a dictionary.
 You can nest dictionaries inside a list, a list of items inside a dictionary, or even a
dictionary inside another dictionary
 A List of Dictionaries
 The following code builds a list of three aliens
alien_0 = {'color': 'green', 'points': 5}
alien_1 = {'color': 'yellow', 'points': 10}
alien_2 = {'color': 'red', 'points': 15}
aliens = [alien_0, alien_1, alien_2]
for alien in aliens:
print(alien)
Nesting

 A List of Dictionaries
 We first create three dictionaries, each representing a different alien.
 We store each of these dictionaries in a list called aliens 1.
 Finally, we loop through the list and print out each alien:
{'color': 'green', 'points': 5}
{'color': 'yellow', 'points': 10}
{'color': 'red', 'points': 15}
Nesting

 A List of Dictionaries
 We use range()to create a fleet of 30 aliens
aliens = []
# Make 30 green aliens.
for alien_number in range(30):
new_alien = {'color': 'green', 'points': 5, 'speed': 'slow'}
aliens.append(new_alien)
# Show the first 5 aliens.
for alien in aliens[:5]:
print(alien)
print("...")
# Show how many aliens have been created.
print(f"Total number of aliens: {len(aliens)}")
Nesting

 A List of Dictionaries
{'color': 'green', 'points': 5, 'speed': 'slow'}
{'color': 'green', 'points': 5, 'speed': 'slow'}
{'color': 'green', 'points': 5, 'speed': 'slow'}
{'color': 'green', 'points': 5, 'speed': 'slow'}
{'color': 'green', 'points': 5, 'speed': 'slow'}
...
 These aliens all have the same characteristics
 Python considers each one a separate object, allowing us to modify each alien individually
Nesting

 A List of Dictionaries
 We can add the following code to change the color, speed and points of the first 3 aliens
for alien in aliens[:3]:
if alien['color'] == 'green':
alien['color'] = 'yellow'
alien['speed'] = 'medium'
alien['points'] = 10
Nesting

 A List in a Dictionary
 Useful to put a list inside a dictionary
 You might describe a pizza that someone is ordering
 You could store a list of the pizza’s toppings

# Store information about a pizza being ordered.

pizza = {'crust': 'thick','toppings': ['mushrooms', 'extra cheese']}
# Summarize the order.
print(f"You ordered a {pizza['crust']}-crust pizza "
"with the following toppings:")
for topping in pizza['toppings']:
print(f"\t{topping}")
Nesting

 A List in a Dictionary
 The following output summarizes the pizza that we plan to build:
You ordered a thick-crust pizza with the following toppings:
mushrooms
extra cheese
Nesting

 A Dictionary in a Dictionary
 A dictionary can be nested inside a dictionary

users = {
'aeinstein': {'first': 'albert','last': 'einstein','location': 'princeton',},
'mcurie': {'first': 'marie','last': 'curie','location': 'paris',},
}
for username, user_info in users.items():
print(f"\nUsername: {username}")
full_name = f"{user_info['first’]} {user_info['last']}"
location = user_info['location']
print(f"\tFull name: {full_name.title()}")
print(f"\tLocation: {location.title()}")
Nesting

 A Dictionary in a Dictionary
 The following output is displayed

Username: aeinstein
Full name: Albert Einstein
Location: Princeton
Username: mcurie
Full name: Marie Curie
Location: Paris
Nesting

 A Dictionary in a Dictionary
# Example shopping cart (items with quantity and price)

cart = {

"apple": {"quantity": 3, "price": 1.50},

"banana": {"quantity": 2, "price": 0.75},

"orange": {"quantity": 4, "price": 1.00}

}
Nesting

 A Dictionary in a Dictionary
# Calculate the total price of the cart

total_price = 0

for item, details in cart.items(): # Outer loop: iterates through the cart dictionary

for key, value in details.items(): # Inner loop: iterates through item details

if key == "quantity":

quantity = value

elif key == "price":

price = value

total_price += quantity * price # Multiply quantity and price for each item

print(f"Total Price: ${total_price:.2f}")

Nesting

 Output:
 Total Price: $10.00
 Explanation:
 The outer loop iterates through each item in the cart (e.g., apple,
banana, orange).
 The inner loop extracts the quantity and price from the dictionary for
each item.
 The total price is calculated by multiplying the quantity by the price
for each item.