Flatten nested dictionaries, compressing keys

Question

Suppose you have a dictionary like:

{\'a\': 1,
 \'c\': {\'a\': 2,
       \'b\': {\'x\': 5,
             \'y\' : 10}},
 \'d\': [1, 2, 3]}

Ho

Answer 1

Here's an algorithm for elegant, in-place replacement. Tested with Python 2.7 and Python 3.5. Using the dot character as a separator.

def flatten_json(json):
    if type(json) == dict:
        for k, v in list(json.items()):
            if type(v) == dict:
                flatten_json(v)
                json.pop(k)
                for k2, v2 in v.items():
                    json[k+"."+k2] = v2

Example:

d = {'a': {'b': 'c'}}                   
flatten_json(d)
print(d)
unflatten_json(d)
print(d)

Output:

{'a.b': 'c'}
{'a': {'b': 'c'}}

I published this code here along with the matching unflatten_json function.

Answer 2

If you want to flat nested dictionary and want all unique keys list then here is the solution:

def flat_dict_return_unique_key(data, unique_keys=set()):
    if isinstance(data, dict):
        [unique_keys.add(i) for i in data.keys()]
        for each_v in data.values():
            if isinstance(each_v, dict):
                flat_dict_return_unique_key(each_v, unique_keys)
    return list(set(unique_keys))

Answer 3

My Python 3.3 Solution using generators:

def flattenit(pyobj, keystring=''):
   if type(pyobj) is dict:
     if (type(pyobj) is dict):
         keystring = keystring + "_" if keystring else keystring
         for k in pyobj:
             yield from flattenit(pyobj[k], keystring + k)
     elif (type(pyobj) is list):
         for lelm in pyobj:
             yield from flatten(lelm, keystring)
   else:
      yield keystring, pyobj

my_obj = {'a': 1, 'c': {'a': 2, 'b': {'x': 5, 'y': 10}}, 'd': [1, 2, 3]}

#your flattened dictionary object
flattened={k:v for k,v in flattenit(my_obj)}
print(flattened)

# result: {'c_b_y': 10, 'd': [1, 2, 3], 'c_a': 2, 'a': 1, 'c_b_x': 5}

Answer 4

I actually wrote a package called cherrypicker recently to deal with this exact sort of thing since I had to do it so often!

I think the following code would give you exactly what you're after:

from cherrypicker import CherryPicker

dct = {
    'a': 1,
    'c': {
        'a': 2,
        'b': {
            'x': 5,
            'y' : 10
        }
    },
    'd': [1, 2, 3]
}

picker = CherryPicker(dct)
picker.flatten().get()

You can install the package with:

pip install cherrypicker

...and there's more docs and guidance at https://cherrypicker.readthedocs.io.

Other methods may be faster, but the priority of this package is to make such tasks easy. If you do have a large list of objects to flatten though, you can also tell CherryPicker to use parallel processing to speed things up.

Answer 5

If you do not mind recursive functions, here is a solution. I have also taken the liberty to include an exclusion-parameter in case there are one or more values you wish to maintain.

Code:

def flatten_dict(dictionary, exclude = [], delimiter ='_'):
    flat_dict = dict()
    for key, value in dictionary.items():
        if isinstance(value, dict) and key not in exclude:
            flatten_value_dict = flatten_dict(value, exclude, delimiter)
            for k, v in flatten_value_dict.items():
                flat_dict[f"{key}{delimiter}{k}"] = v
        else:
            flat_dict[key] = value
    return flat_dict

Usage:

d = {'a':1, 'b':[1, 2], 'c':3, 'd':{'a':4, 'b':{'a':7, 'b':8}, 'c':6}, 'e':{'a':1,'b':2}}
flat_d = flatten_dict(dictionary=d, exclude=['e'], delimiter='.')
print(flat_d)

Output:

{'a': 1, 'b': [1, 2], 'c': 3, 'd.a': 4, 'd.b.a': 7, 'd.b.b': 8, 'd.c': 6, 'e': {'a': 1, 'b': 2}}

Answer 6

This is not restricted to dictionaries, but every mapping type that implements .items(). Further ist faster as it avoides an if condition. Nevertheless credits go to Imran:

def flatten(d, parent_key=''):
    items = []
    for k, v in d.items():
        try:
            items.extend(flatten(v, '%s%s_' % (parent_key, k)).items())
        except AttributeError:
            items.append(('%s%s' % (parent_key, k), v))
    return dict(items)