iterating through a list of dictionary names

Question

I am trying to create a breadth first search with a data set. I need to iterate through the data set but I'm not sure how to iterate through my list of dictionaries that contain a list.

I know to access say node 2 second value, I would do a[1]['node2][1] . However, I'm not sure how to iterate through each name.

This isn't actual code but I would want something similar to this:

   for key_of_dict in a:
       print key_of_dict
       for j in a[key_of_dict]
           print ": " + j

    #This pseudo code should print the key and the data in the list of the respective dict 

ex:

a = 
[
  {'node1':[1,2,3]},
  {'node2':[4,5,6]},
  {'node3':[7,8,9]},
  {'node4':['a','b','c']}
]

Answer 1

Simply iterate through dict.values() :

for d in a:
    for v in d.values():
        print(v)

Demo:

>>> for d in a:
    for v in d.values():
        print(*v)


1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
a b c

Or if you print just v :

[1, 2, 3]
[4, 5, 6]
[7, 8, 9]
['a', 'b', 'c']

To get the keys as well, iterate through d.items() , which will return key-value pairs of the dict.

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

a = [{'node1':[1,2,3]},
     {'node2':[4,5,6]},
     {'node3':[7,8,9]},
     {'node4':['a','b','c']}]

python 2.7:

for dict in a:
    for key,list in dict.iteritems():
        print '{} : {}'.format(key,list)

python 3:

for dict in a:
    for key,list in dict.items():
        print('{} : {}'.format(key,list))

output:

node1 : [1, 2, 3]
node2 : [4, 5, 6]
node3 : [7, 8, 9]
node4 : ['a', 'b', 'c']