Comparing a dictionary and a list of dictionaries Python

Question

I'm new to Python.

I'm trying to compare a dictionary results against a list of dictionaries d . If it's equal to a dictionary in the list d (apart from lacking in results 'name' key), I should print one of the values (name), if not equal to any - print no match.

In particular: d - list of dictionaries:

[OrderedDict([('name', 'Alice'), ('AAA', '2'), ('BBB', '8'), ('CCC', '3')]), OrderedDict([('name', 'Bob'), ('AAA', '4'), ('BBB', '1'), ('CCC', '5')]), 
OrderedDict([('name', 'Charlie'), ('AAA', '3'), ('BBB', '2'), ('CCC', '5')])]

results - dictionary:

{'AAA': 4, 'BBB': 1, 'CCC': 5}

Since results is identical to the similar part of the dict list d , I should return 'name' in that d dict list (Bob in this case)

I was trying the following code, but it doesn't seem to work:

for i in range(len(d)):
    if key in d[i] != 'name':
        for k, v in results.items and d[i].items():
            if results.items() == d[i].items():
                print(d[i]['name'])
else:
    print("No match")

I'd be happy if you could provide some simple and more detailed explanations, as I'm not advanced yet:)

Thanks!

Answer 1

Here's a one-liner:

next((x["name"] for x in d
      if results == {k: int(v) for k, v in x.items() if k != 'name'}),
     "No match")
# Output: 'Bob'

---

Alright, so that's not super helpful. Let's debug your code.

for k, v in results.items and d[i].items():
    if results.items() == d[i].items():

The problem in your code is that you are comparing a list of key-value pair as a sequence . There's no guarantee that the regular dict (non-OrderedDict) will give you the .items() in the same order as the OrderedDict. Instead you could just say (with a little bit of dict-comprehension:

if {k: int(v) for k, v in d[i].items() if k != 'name'} == result:
    print(d[i]["name"])

PS: Please use the slightly better: for item in items: something(item) instead of for i in range(len(items)): something(items[i]) construct. Put this together with a little bit list/dict comprehension you'll get the answer in the first line. :)

Answer 2

Easy to understand:

done = False
for di in d:
    l = list(di.values())
    l.pop(0)
    l = [int(i) for i in l]
    if l == list(results.values()):
        print(di['name'])
        done = True
if done == False:
    print('no match found')

Output for your results dictionary:

Bob