CODEWITHSUNDEEP
python
user170008
user170008

Reputation: 1066

Converting a string to dictionary in python

I have the following string :

str = "{application.root.category.id:2}"

I would like to convert the above to a dictionary data type in python as in :

dict = {application.root.category.id:2}

I tried using eval() and this is the error I got:

AttributeError: java package 'application' has no attribute "root"

My current python is of <2.3 and I cannot update the python to >2.3 .

Any solutions ?

Upvotes: 4

Views: 19491

Answers (3)

user3775127
user3775127

Reputation: 1

Suppose I have a string

str='{1:0,2:3,3:4}'
str=str.split('{}')
mydict={}
for every in str1.split(','):
    z=every.split(':')
    z1=[]
    for every in z:
        z1.append(int(every))
    for k in z1:
        mydict[z1[0]]=z1[1]

output: mydict {1: 0, 2: 1, 3: 4}

Upvotes: 0

Simon Peverett
Simon Peverett

Reputation: 4207

First, 'dict' is the type name so not good for the variable name.

The following, does precisely as you asked...

a_dict = dict([str.strip('{}').split(":"),])

But if, as I expect, you want to add more mappings to the dictionary, a different approach is required.

Upvotes: 3

Gareth McCaughan
Gareth McCaughan

Reputation: 19981

Python dictionaries have keys that needn't be strings; therefore, when you write {a: b} you need the quotation marks around a if it's meant to be a string. ({1:2}, for instance, maps the integer 1 to the integer 2.)

So you can't just pass something of the sort you have to eval. You'll need to parse it yourself. (Or, if it happens to be easier, change whatever generates it to put quotation marks around the keys.)

Exactly how to parse it depends on what your dictionaries might actually look like; for instance, can the values themselves be dictionaries, or are they always numbers, or what? Here's a simple and probably too crude approach:

contents = str[1:-1]        # strip off leading { and trailing }
items = contents.split(',') # each individual item looks like key:value
pairs = [item.split(':',1) for item in items] # ("key","value"), both strings
d = dict((k,eval(v)) for (k,v) in pairs) # evaluate values but not strings

Upvotes: 5

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