Filter dict to contain only certain keys?

Question

I\'ve got a dict that has a whole bunch of entries. I\'m only interested in a select few of them. Is there an easy way to prune all the other ones out?

Answer 1

Based on the accepted answer by delnan.

What if one of your wanted keys aren't in the old_dict? The delnan solution will throw a KeyError exception that you can catch. If that's not what you need maybe you want to:

1. only include keys that excists both in the old_dict and your set of wanted_keys.

   old_dict = {'name':"Foobar", 'baz':42}
   wanted_keys = ['name', 'age']
   new_dict = {k: old_dict[k] for k in set(wanted_keys) & set(old_dict.keys())}
   
   >>> new_dict
   {'name': 'Foobar'}
   

2. have a default value for keys that's not set in old_dict.

   default = None
   new_dict = {k: old_dict[k] if k in old_dict else default for k in wanted_keys}
   
   >>> new_dict
   {'age': None, 'name': 'Foobar'}