nesteddict

A nested dictionary data structure for Python.

In order to avoid code like this

if 'a' in dictionary:
    if 'b' in dictionar['a']
        dictionary['a']['b']['c'] = 3
    else:
        dictionary['a']['b'] = {'c': 3}
else:
    dictionary['a'] = {'b': {'c': 3}}

NestedDict enables the following syntax

from nesteddict import NestedDict
d = NestedDict()
d['a', 'b', 'c'] = 3

A defaultdict coult be used to accomplish a similar goal, but only to a finite depth specified at the time of construction

>>> # Nested dictionary of depth 4
>>> d = defaultdict(lambda: defaultdict(lambda: defaultdict(dict)))

NestedDict is able to handle nested dictinoaries of arbitrary depth. Additionally, since NestedDict extends dict, it prints nicely to the console by default

>>> my_default_dict
defaultdict(<function <lambda> at 0x10077f840>, {1: defaultdict(<function <lambda>.<locals>.<lambda> at 0x10185a400>, {2: 3})})
>>> my_nested_dict
{1: {2: 3}}

Install

Clone this repository and run python setup.py develop to install.

Notes

Tuples are automatically parsed into NestedDict paths when used with the [] operator. That means that there is no difference between nesteddict[1, 2, 3] = 4 and nesteddict[(1, 2, 3)] = 4. In order to use tuples as keys, you must use one of the following approaches

>>> d[(1, 2, 3), ] = 4
>>> d.set((1, 2, 3), 4)

NestedDict has three public methods that act as short circuits to the underlying __getitem__, __setitem__ and __delitem__ methods of the base class dict: nesteddict.set, nesteddict.get and nesteddict.delete. Use those functions any time you want to be positive that you are using the standard dict behavior.

nickstanisha/nesteddict

nesteddict

Install

Notes