How to access an element inside a nested dictionary in python?

Question

    myfamily = {
      "child1" : {
        "name" : "Emil",
        "year" : 2004
      },
      "child2" : {
        "name" : "Tobias",
        "year" : 2007
      },
      "child3" : {
        "name" : "Linus",
        "year" : 2011
      }
    }

Does this answer your question? [Accessing value inside nested dictionaries](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10399614/accessing-value-inside-nested-dictionaries) — jossefaz, Jul 05 '20 at 05:15

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 04 '20 at 19:27

1

Indexing myfamily yields another dict, which you index like any other.

>>> myfamily["child1"]["name"]
'Emil'

answered Jul 04 '20 at 19:27

chepner

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 04 '20 at 19:26

0

You can treat sub dictionaries just like a new dictionary

myfamily['child1']['year']

answered Jul 04 '20 at 19:26

greenPlant

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score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 04 '20 at 19:28

0

You can easily access a child by using myfamily["child1"]
You can also access all keys by calling the keys() method on the myfamily variable

answered Jul 04 '20 at 19:28

cocool97

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score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 04 '20 at 19:36

If you'd like to access the elements of myfamily, you can refer to those as myfamily['child1'], and that will return:

{
    "name" : "Emil",
    "year" : 2004
}

If child1 was its own directory, you were refer to elements in that as child1['name'] or child1['year']. Extending that to myfamily['child1'], you can access elements in child1 by identifying the element you want, like myfamily['child1']['name'] or myfamily['child1']['year'].

Why doesn't myfamily[child1['name']] work? If we separate our pieces, child1['name'] contains Emil. Substitute that for child1['name'] in myfamily[child1['name']], and we have myfamily['Emil']. That element doesn't exist in the myfamily dictionary, and will fail.

How to access an element inside a nested dictionary in python?

4 Answers4

Linked