Python list of dictionaries search

Question

Assume I have this:

[
{\"name\": \"Tom\", \"age\": 10},
{\"name\": \"Mark\", \"age\": 5},
{\"name\": \"Pam\", \"age\": 7}
]

and by searchin

Answer 1

You can try this:

''' lst: list of dictionaries '''
lst = [{"name": "Tom", "age": 10}, {"name": "Mark", "age": 5}, {"name": "Pam", "age": 7}]

search = raw_input("What name: ") #Input name that needs to be searched (say 'Pam')

print [ lst[i] for i in range(len(lst)) if(lst[i]["name"]==search) ][0] #Output
>>> {'age': 7, 'name': 'Pam'} 

Answer 2

I tested various methods to go through a list of dictionaries and return the dictionaries where key x has a certain value.

Results:

• Speed: list comprehension > generator expression >> normal list iteration >>> filter.
• All scale linear with the number of dicts in the list (10x list size -> 10x time).
• The keys per dictionary does not affect speed significantly for large amounts (thousands) of keys. Please see this graph I calculated: https://imgur.com/a/quQzv (method names see below).

All tests done with Python 3.6.4, W7x64.

from random import randint
from timeit import timeit


list_dicts = []
for _ in range(1000):     # number of dicts in the list
    dict_tmp = {}
    for i in range(10):   # number of keys for each dict
        dict_tmp[f"key{i}"] = randint(0,50)
    list_dicts.append( dict_tmp )



def a():
    # normal iteration over all elements
    for dict_ in list_dicts:
        if dict_["key3"] == 20:
            pass

def b():
    # use 'generator'
    for dict_ in (x for x in list_dicts if x["key3"] == 20):
        pass

def c():
    # use 'list'
    for dict_ in [x for x in list_dicts if x["key3"] == 20]:
        pass

def d():
    # use 'filter'
    for dict_ in filter(lambda x: x['key3'] == 20, list_dicts):
        pass

Results:

1.7303 # normal list iteration 
1.3849 # generator expression 
1.3158 # list comprehension 
7.7848 # filter

Answer 3

dicts=[
{"name": "Tom", "age": 10},
{"name": "Mark", "age": 5},
{"name": "Pam", "age": 7}
]

from collections import defaultdict
dicts_by_name=defaultdict(list)
for d in dicts:
    dicts_by_name[d['name']]=d

print dicts_by_name['Tom']

#output
#>>>
#{'age': 10, 'name': 'Tom'}

Answer 4

You can use a list comprehension:

def search(name, people):
    return [element for element in people if element['name'] == name]

Answer 5

Have you ever tried out the pandas package? It's perfect for this kind of search task and optimized too.

import pandas as pd

listOfDicts = [
{"name": "Tom", "age": 10},
{"name": "Mark", "age": 5},
{"name": "Pam", "age": 7}
]

# Create a data frame, keys are used as column headers.
# Dict items with the same key are entered into the same respective column.
df = pd.DataFrame(listOfDicts)

# The pandas dataframe allows you to pick out specific values like so:

df2 = df[ (df['name'] == 'Pam') & (df['age'] == 7) ]

# Alternate syntax, same thing

df2 = df[ (df.name == 'Pam') & (df.age == 7) ]

I've added a little bit of benchmarking below to illustrate pandas' faster runtimes on a larger scale i.e. 100k+ entries:

setup_large = 'dicts = [];\
[dicts.extend(({ "name": "Tom", "age": 10 },{ "name": "Mark", "age": 5 },\
{ "name": "Pam", "age": 7 },{ "name": "Dick", "age": 12 })) for _ in range(25000)];\
from operator import itemgetter;import pandas as pd;\
df = pd.DataFrame(dicts);'

setup_small = 'dicts = [];\
dicts.extend(({ "name": "Tom", "age": 10 },{ "name": "Mark", "age": 5 },\
{ "name": "Pam", "age": 7 },{ "name": "Dick", "age": 12 }));\
from operator import itemgetter;import pandas as pd;\
df = pd.DataFrame(dicts);'

method1 = '[item for item in dicts if item["name"] == "Pam"]'
method2 = 'df[df["name"] == "Pam"]'

import timeit
t = timeit.Timer(method1, setup_small)
print('Small Method LC: ' + str(t.timeit(100)))
t = timeit.Timer(method2, setup_small)
print('Small Method Pandas: ' + str(t.timeit(100)))

t = timeit.Timer(method1, setup_large)
print('Large Method LC: ' + str(t.timeit(100)))
t = timeit.Timer(method2, setup_large)
print('Large Method Pandas: ' + str(t.timeit(100)))

#Small Method LC: 0.000191926956177
#Small Method Pandas: 0.044392824173
#Large Method LC: 1.98827004433
#Large Method Pandas: 0.324505090714

Answer 6

def dsearch(lod, **kw):
    return filter(lambda i: all((i[k] == v for (k, v) in kw.items())), lod)

lod=[{'a':33, 'b':'test2', 'c':'a.ing333'},
     {'a':22, 'b':'ihaha', 'c':'fbgval'},
     {'a':33, 'b':'TEst1', 'c':'s.ing123'},
     {'a':22, 'b':'ihaha', 'c':'dfdvbfjkv'}]



list(dsearch(lod, a=22))

[{'a': 22, 'b': 'ihaha', 'c': 'fbgval'},
 {'a': 22, 'b': 'ihaha', 'c': 'dfdvbfjkv'}]



list(dsearch(lod, a=22, b='ihaha'))

[{'a': 22, 'b': 'ihaha', 'c': 'fbgval'},
 {'a': 22, 'b': 'ihaha', 'c': 'dfdvbfjkv'}]


list(dsearch(lod, a=22, c='fbgval'))

[{'a': 22, 'b': 'ihaha', 'c': 'fbgval'}]