Python: How to pass a function containing a dictionary to another function?

Question

I'm new to python, and I'm building a game to teach myself python. This game will have a number of lessons, with questions and answers; the user will gain and lose points depending on the validity of their answers.

I'm using dictionaries to store the questions and answers that will be asked in each lesson.

I want to display and check the keys and values of the dictionary only at specific points (e.g. after the user enters a command). To do this, I imagined that I could create functions containing the dictionaries and then pass them to a main function when needed.

But when I run the code below, I get the following error: AttributeError: 'function' object has no attribute 'iteritems'

So I have two questions:

1. I tried removing the dictionary from within a function, and it works just fine then. Is there any way (or reason) to make it work within a function?
2. Is it possible to use just one dictionary and check the keys and values of a section of it at certain points?

Here's my code so far. Any advice whatsoever would be much appreciated!

points = 10 # user begins game with 10 pts 

def point_system(): 
    global points

    #help user track points
    if 5 >= points: 
        print "Careful. You have %d points left." % points 
    elif points == 0: 
        dead("You've lost all your points. Please start over.")
    else:
        print "Good job. Spend your points wisely." 

def lesson1(): 
    #create a dictionary 
    mydict = {
    "q1":"a1", 
    "q2":"a2"
    }

return mydict

def main(lesson):
    global points

    #get key:value pair from dictionary
    for k, v in lesson.iteritems():
        lesson.get(k,v) # Is the .get step necessary? It works perfectly well without it.
        print k
        user_answer = raw_input("What's your answer?: ") 

#test if user_answer == value in dictionary, and award points accordingly 
        if user_answer == v:
            user_answer = True
            points += 1 #increase points by 1 
            print "Congrats, you gained a point! You now have %d points" % points 
            point_system()
        elif user_answer != v: 
            points -= 1 #decrease points by 1 
            print "Oops, you lost a point. You now have %d points" % points 
            point_system()
        else: 
            print "Something went wrong."
            point_system()


main(lesson1) 

and the code that works:

points = 10 # user begins game with 10 pts 

#create a dictionary 
lesson1 = {
"q1":"a1", 
"q2":"a2"
}

def point_system(): 
    global points

    #help user track points
    if 5 >= points: 
    print "Careful. You have %d points left." % points 
    elif points == 0: 
    dead("You've lost all your points. Please start over.")
    else:
    print "Good job. Spend your points wisely." 

def main(lesson):
    global points

    #get key:value pair from dictionary
    for k, v in lesson.iteritems():
        lesson.get(k,v) # Is the .get step necessary? It works perfectly well without it.
        print k
        user_answer = raw_input("What's your answer?: ") 

#test if user_answer == value in dictionary, and award points accordingly 
        if user_answer == v:
            user_answer = True
            points += 1 #increase points by 1 
            print "Congrats, you gained a point! You now have %d points" % points 
            point_system()
        elif user_answer != v: 
            points -= 1 #decrease points by 1 
            print "Oops, you lost a point. You now have %d points" % points 
            point_system()
        else: 
            print "Something went wrong."
            point_system()


main(lesson1) 

Answer 1

You passed a function that returns a dictionary so you should call the function first to get the dictionary. So you may modify your code so that main accepts dictionary (the code actually expects a dictionary):

main(lesson1())

If you really would like to pass a function then you should modify you main to execute function first to get the dictionary:

def main(lessonFunc):
    global points
    lesson = lessonFunc()

    #get key:value pair from dictionary
    for k, v in lesson.iteritems():

but the first option is probably better. You could also pack a lesson into an object.

Answer 2

You're calling main() with the lesson1 function and not the result of the lesson1 function (which is a directory).

You should write:

main(lesson1())

By the way, lesson1 must also return the created directory for this to work:

def lesson1(): 
    #create a dictionary 
    mydict = {
        "q1":"a1", 
        "q2":"a2"
    }
    return mydict