What's the best way to search for a Python dictionary value in a list of dictionaries?

Question

I have the following data structure:

  data = [
      {\'site\': \'Stackoverflow\', \'id\': 1},
      {\'site\': \'Superuser\', \'id\': 2}, 
      {\'site\':         


        

Answer 1

Lists absolutely require loops. That's what lists are for.

To avoid looping you have to avoid lists.

You want dictionaries of search keys and objects.

sites = dict( (d['site'],d) for d in data )
ids = dict( (d['id'],d] for d in data )

Now you can find the item associated with 'Superuser' with sites["Superuser"] using a hashed lookup instead of a loop.