Python convert complex String to List of Dict

Question

I need to convert this object unicode or str to list/array of dict, the input data is:

[('ALMAFUERTE', 328), ('ALAMAFUERTE', 1), ('ALMFUERTE', 1), ('ALMZFUERTE', 1)]

Is a column of csv, I import this with PANDAS, but I need something similar to array of dict for processing

[{'ALMAFUERTE': 328}, {'ALAMAFUERTE': 1}, {'ALMFUERTE': 1}, {'ALMZFUERTE': 1}]

Thanks.

If that's what your CSV file looks like, then it's not a CSV file. — abarnert, Aug 13 '18 at 23:49
More to the point: how did you get that file? Did you write some code that just does something like `f.write(str(list_of_pairs))`? If so, _that_ is the code you need to fix. You should be writing data in some format that's meant to be read back and parsed, like JSON or CSV, not just storing the Python string representation and then hoping you can figure out how to parse it later. — abarnert, Aug 13 '18 at 23:50

brandonwang · Accepted Answer · 2018-08-13T23:50:02.910

0

If "[('ALMAFUERTE', 328), ('ALAMAFUERTE', 1), ('ALMFUERTE', 1), ('ALMZFUERTE', 1)]" is your input, you need to turn it into a list using the eval() method.

>>> l = "[('ALMAFUERTE', 328), ('ALAMAFUERTE', 1), ('ALMFUERTE', 1), ('ALMZFUERTE', 1)]"
>>> eval(l)
[('ALMAFUERTE', 328), ('ALAMAFUERTE', 1), ('ALMFUERTE', 1), ('ALMZFUERTE', 1)]

Then you can do this:

>>> l = [('ALMAFUERTE', 328), ('ALAMAFUERTE', 1), ('ALMFUERTE', 1), ('ALMZFUERTE', 1)]
>>> [{i :j} for i, j in l]
[{'ALMAFUERTE': 328}, {'ALAMAFUERTE': 1}, {'ALMFUERTE': 1}, {'ALMZFUERTE': 1}]

If you are using a pandas DataFrame that is structured like this:

>>> l = [('ALMAFUERTE', 328), ('ALAMAFUERTE', 1), ('ALMFUERTE', 1), ('ALMZFUERTE', 1)]
>>> df = pd.DataFrame(l, columns=['name', 'val'])
          name  val
0   ALMAFUERTE  328
1  ALAMAFUERTE    1
2    ALMFUERTE    1
3   ALMZFUERTE    1

You can do this:

>>> d = []
>>> for _, row in df.iterrows():
        d.append({row['name']:row['val']})

>>> print(d)
[{'ALMAFUERTE': 328}, {'ALAMAFUERTE': 1}, {'ALMFUERTE': 1}, {'ALMZFUERTE': 1}]

edited Aug 13 '18 at 23:50

answered Aug 13 '18 at 23:34

brandonwang

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It's perfect if the data type is a list, but I need to convert my data type to list, and when I list (l) it returns this: ['[', '(', "'", 'A', 'L', 'M', 'A', 'F', 'U', 'E', 'R', 'T', 'E', "'", ',', ' ', '3', '2', '8', ')', ',', ' ', '(', "'", 'A', 'L', 'A', 'M', 'A', 'F', 'U', 'E', 'R', 'T', 'E', "'", ',', ' ', '1', ')', ',', ' ', '(', "'", 'A', 'L', 'M', 'F', 'U', 'E', 'R', 'T', 'E', "'", ',', ' ', '1', ')', ',', ' ', '(', "'", 'A', 'L', 'M', 'Z', 'F', 'U', 'E', 'R', 'T', 'E', "'", ',', ' ', '1', ')', ']'] the type inport is – German Avalos Aug 13 '18 at 23:46
If the input is a string, you can use the `eval()` method. I'll edit my answer. – brandonwang Aug 13 '18 at 23:51
Thanks Brandom, with eval() works perfectly. Thank you very much!! – German Avalos Aug 13 '18 at 23:55
@user3483203 what is a reason? – German Avalos Aug 13 '18 at 23:55
@GermanAvalos they might be referring to this [Why is using 'eval' a bad practice?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1832940/why-is-using-eval-a-bad-practice) – chickity china chinese chicken Aug 14 '18 at 00:32

Python convert complex String to List of Dict

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