Python Dictionary – How To Create Dictionaries In Python

Dictionaries in Python are a list of items that are unordered and can be changed by use of built in methods. Dictionaries are used to create a map of unique keys to values.

About Dictionaries in Python

To create a Dictionary, use {} curly brackets to construct the dictionary and [] square brackets to index it.

Separate the key and value with colons : and commas, between each pair.

Keys must be quoted, for instance: “title” : “How to use Dictionaries in Python”

As with lists we can print out the dictionary by printing the reference to it.

A dictionary maps a set of objects (keys) to another set of objects (values) so you can create an unordered list of objects.

Dictionaries are mutable, which means they can be changed.

The values that the keys point to can be any Python value.

Dictionaries are unordered, so the order that the keys are added doesn’t necessarily reflect what order they may be reported back. Because of this, you can refer to a value by its key name.

Create a new dictionary

# In order to construct a dictionary you can start with an empty one.

>>> mydict={}

# This will create a dictionary, which has an initially six key-value pairs, where iphone* is the key and years the values

released = {
        "iphone" : 2007,
        "iphone 3G" : 2008,
        "iphone 3GS" : 2009,
        "iphone 4" : 2010,
        "iphone 4S" : 2011,
        "iphone 5" : 2012
    }
print released

>>Output
{'iphone 3G': 2008, 'iphone 4S': 2011, 'iphone 3GS': 2009, '
    iphone': 2007, 'iphone 5': 2012, 'iphone 4': 2010}

Add a value to the dictionary

You can add a value to the dictionary in the example below. In addition, we’ll go ahead and change the value to show how dictionaries differ from a Python Set.

#the syntax is: mydict[key] = "value"
released["iphone 5S"] = 2013
print released
>>Output
{'iphone 5S': 2013, 'iphone 3G': 2008, 'iphone 4S': 2011, 'iphone 3GS': 2009,
'iphone': 2007, 'iphone 5': 2012, 'iphone 4': 2010}

Remove a key and it’s value

You can remove an element with the del operator

del released["iphone"]
print released
>>output
{'iphone 3G': 2008, 'iphone 4S': 2011, 'iphone 3GS': 2009, 'iphone 5': 2012,
'iphone 4': 2010}

Check the length

The len() function gives the number of pairs in the dictionary. In other words, how many items are in the dictionary.

print len(released)

Test the dictionary

Check if a key exists in a given dictionary by using the in operator like this:

>>> my_dict = {'a' : 'one', 'b' : 'two'}
>>> 'a' in my_dict
True
>>> 'b' in my_dict
True
>>> 'c' in my_dict
False

or like this in a for loop

for item in released:
    if "iphone 5" in released:
        print "Key found"
        break
    else:
        print "No keys found"
>>output
Key found

Get a value of a specified key

print released.get("iphone 3G", "none")

Print all keys with a for loop

print "-" * 10
print "iphone releases so far: "
print "-" * 10
for release in released:
    print release

>>output
----------
iphone releases so far: 
----------
iphone 3G
iphone 4S
iphone 3GS
iphone
iphone 5
iphone 4

Print all key and values

for key,val in released.items():
    print key, "=>", val

>>output
iphone 3G => 2008
iphone 4S => 2011
iphone 3GS => 2009
iphone => 2007
iphone 5 => 2012
iphone 4 => 2010

Get only the keys from the dictionary

phones = released.keys()
print phones

# or print them out like this:

print "This dictionary contains these keys: ", " ".join(released)
>>iphone 3G iphone 4S iphone 3GS iphone iphone 5 iphone 4

# or like this:

print "This dictionary contains these keys: ", " ", released.keys()
>>['iphone 3G', 'iphone 4S', 'iphone 3GS', 'iphone', 'iphone 5', 'iphone 4']

Printing the values

Elements may be referenced via square brackets, for example:
print released[“iphone”]

print "Values:
",
for year in released:
    releases= released[year]
    print releases

>>output:
Values:
2008
2011
2009
2007
2012
2010

Printing with pprint

pprint.pprint(released)

Sorting the dictionary

In addition to printing, let’s sort the data so we have an expected output.

for key, value in sorted(released.items()):
    print key, value
>>output:
('iphone', 2007)
('iphone 3G', 2008)
('iphone 3GS', 2009)
('iphone 4', 2010)
('iphone 4S', 2011)
('iphone 5', 2012)
"""

for phones in sorted(released, key=len):
    print phones, released[phones]

>>output:
iphone 2007
iphone 5 2012
iphone 4 2010
iphone 3G 2008
iphone 4S 2011
iphone 3GS 2009

Counting

Finally, let’s show the value of using a counter in the dictionary to display the number of items.

count = {}
for element in released:
    count[element] = count.get(element, 0) + 1
print count

>>output:
{'iphone 3G': 1, 'iphone 4S': 1, 'iphone 3GS': 1, 'iphone': 1, 
'iphone 5': 1, 'iphone 4': 1}