What is the best way to implement nested dictionaries?

Question

I have a data structure which essentially amounts to a nested dictionary. Let\'s say it looks like this:

{\'new jersey\': {\'mercer county\': {\'plumbers\':          


        

Answer 1

As for "obnoxious try/catch blocks":

d = {}
d.setdefault('key',{}).setdefault('inner key',{})['inner inner key'] = 'value'
print d

yields

{'key': {'inner key': {'inner inner key': 'value'}}}

You can use this to convert from your flat dictionary format to structured format:

fd = {('new jersey', 'mercer county', 'plumbers'): 3,
 ('new jersey', 'mercer county', 'programmers'): 81,
 ('new jersey', 'middlesex county', 'programmers'): 81,
 ('new jersey', 'middlesex county', 'salesmen'): 62,
 ('new york', 'queens county', 'plumbers'): 9,
 ('new york', 'queens county', 'salesmen'): 36}

for (k1,k2,k3), v in fd.iteritems():
    d.setdefault(k1, {}).setdefault(k2, {})[k3] = v

Answer 2

Just because I haven't seen one this small, here's a dict that gets as nested as you like, no sweat:

# yo dawg, i heard you liked dicts                                                                      
def yodict():
    return defaultdict(yodict)

Answer 3

Since you have a star-schema design, you might want to structure it more like a relational table and less like a dictionary.

import collections

class Jobs( object ):
    def __init__( self, state, county, title, count ):
        self.state= state
        self.count= county
        self.title= title
        self.count= count

facts = [
    Jobs( 'new jersey', 'mercer county', 'plumbers', 3 ),
    ...

def groupBy( facts, name ):
    total= collections.defaultdict( int )
    for f in facts:
        key= getattr( f, name )
        total[key] += f.count

That kind of thing can go a long way to creating a data warehouse-like design without the SQL overheads.