CODEWITHSUNDEEP
python-3.x
Roland Carignan
Roland Carignan

Reputation: 31

Python 3 Dictionary "list indices need to be integers not str"

I have been doing anything I can think of, and it is now getting to the point where I have no clue where to go. After googling errors and general dictionary help I have ended up here...

I have not finished it, the bottom portion of main is not taken care of so disregard it. The preliminary testing has found this error and I do not like to build a program with the start not working as I am fairly new to Python. (this is also my first post on this forum, so if something is not up to snuff, please let me know)

def create(name, age):
    contact = {
        'name' : name,
        'age' : age,
        'email' : 'email',
        'phone' : 'phone',
        }



def getName(contact):
    name = input("What's their name? ")
    return contact[name]


def getAge(contact):
    age = int(input("What's their age? "))
    return contact ["name"]

def getPhone(contact):
    phone = input("What's their phone number? ")
    return contact['phone']

def getEmail(contact):
    email = input("What's their email? ")
    return contact['email']




def setName(contact, name):
    contact['name'] = name

def setAge(contact, age):
    contact['age'] = age

def setPhone(contact, phone):
    contact['phone'] = phone

def setEmail(contact, phone):
    contact['email'] = email

def birthday(contact):
    a = getAge(contact)
    a +=1
    setAge(contact, a)

def show(contact):
    print("Name: ", name)
    print("Phone number: ", phone)
    print("Age: ", age)
    print("Email: ", email)



def main():
    ann = create('Ann', 21)
    roland = create('Roland', 18)
    john = create ('John' , 19)
    print(getName("contact"))
    getAge()
    getPhone()
    getEmail()
    setName()
    setAge()
    setPhone()
    setEmail()
    show()


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Upvotes: 2

Views: 71

Answers (1)

xj9
xj9

Reputation: 3471

The first thing you should do is return the contact dict from create(), like so:

def create(name, age):
    return {'name': name,
            'age': age,
            'email': None,
            'phone': None}

That way you'll have access to the dict that was created by the function call:

>>> john = create('John', 42)
>>> john
{'name': 'John', 'age': 42, 'email': None, 'phone': None}
>>> john['name'] == 'John'
True
>>> john['age'] == 42
True

Doing otherwise would result in a TypeError. You would see the same error when attempting to call any of your setter functions on the return value of your current implementation of create(). Take the following function:

def set_name(contact, name):
    contact['name'] = name

set_name() is expecting a dict which it will modify by changing the value of the 'name' key to the value of name. This won't work if contact is None.

The error you are asking about is a result of your implementation of the following function:

def get_name(contact):
    name = input("What's their name? ")
    return contact[name]

If we walk through the body we will see the following, assuming we called it the way you did in your example code: (get_name('contact'))

>>> name == '<user input>'
True
>>> contact == 'contact'
True

So, when the function tried to read they key name from contact it was actually trying to read the character index of the string "contact" which only takes integers as indices. The function should probably read something like:

def get_name(contact):
    return contact['name']

Which would allow you to do the following: (using the same john as above)

>>> get_name(john)
'John'

Upvotes: 1

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