Make a dictionary with duplicate keys in Python

Question

I have the following list which contains duplicate car registration numbers with different values. I want to convert it into a dictionary which accepts this multiple keys of

Answer 1

You can change the behavior of the built in types in Python. For your case it's really easy to create a dict subclass that will store duplicated values in lists under the same key automatically:

class Dictlist(dict):
    def __setitem__(self, key, value):
        try:
            self[key]
        except KeyError:
            super(Dictlist, self).__setitem__(key, [])
        self[key].append(value)

Output example:

>>> d = dictlist.Dictlist()
>>> d['test'] = 1
>>> d['test'] = 2
>>> d['test'] = 3
>>> d
{'test': [1, 2, 3]}
>>> d['other'] = 100
>>> d
{'test': [1, 2, 3], 'other': [100]}