CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonlistdictionarynested
OhVeeOh
OhVeeOh

Reputation: 11

Accessings deeply nested dictionary/list elements/values in Python

I've been racking my brain on this problem and the logic needed to step through this output from Google Maps API.

Essentially I'm using google maps Distance_Matrix: Here is an example of the returned information from a call of the API for distance/time between two addresses, which I've assigned to variable distanceMatrixReturn for this example.

  distanceMatrixReturn = {
            {'destination_addresses': ['This would be ADDRESS 1'],
            'status': 'OK',
            'rows': [
            {
                'elements': [
                 {
                     'duration_in_traffic': {
                           'text': '10 mins', 'value': 619},
                            'status': 'OK',
                             'distance': {'text': '2.8 mi', 'value': 4563},
                             'duration': {'text': '9 mins', 'value': 540}}]}], 
                            }]
              }], 
    'origin_addresses': ['This would be ADDRESS 2'] 
}

Now, being a python newbie struggling with nested dictionaries and lists; Here is my thought process:

I want to access the value '2.8 mi' that to my impression, is within a dictionary tied to the key 'text', which is in turn inside a dictionary assigned to the key 'distance', which is in another dictionary with the key 'duration_in_traffic'.

The key 'duration_in_traffic' seems to be within a list, tied to the dictionary key 'elements', which in turn is in a list tied to another dictionary key, 'rows'.

Now, this seems very very convoluted and there must be an easy way to handle this situation, or maybe my logic is just off about the nested within nested elements and the method of accessing them.

For example, among other posts here, I've read the following to try and figure out the process of intepreting something seemingly similar. How to access a dictionary key value present inside a list?

Please let me know if I structured the distanceMatrixReturn on this post poorly. I spaced it to try and make it more readable, I hope I've achieved that.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 811

Answers (3)

Eli Korvigo
Eli Korvigo

Reputation: 10513

Your dictionary is broken, so it's hard to imagine the right path. Anyway.

from operator import getitem

path = ["rows", 0, "elements", 0, "duration_in_traffic", "distance", "text"]

reduce(getitem, path, distanceMatrixReturn)  # -> "2.8 mi"

On Python 3 you will have to import reduce from functools first.

Upvotes: 1

robert.otherone
robert.otherone

Reputation: 48

If you trying to access 2.8 mi from distanceMatrixReturn, you could do this:

 distanceMatrixReturn['rows'][0]['elements'][0]['duration_in_traffic']['distance']['text']

Upvotes: 0

Wayne Werner
Wayne Werner

Reputation: 51847

While ugly, it's pretty straightforward:

distanceMatrixReturn['rows'][0]['elements'][0]['duration_in_traffic']['distance']['text']

There's not really any cleaner way to do this, unless you want to create namedtuples or classes, but effectively you're still going to parse out the data the same way - you'll just break it out over different parts of your program.

As for which option is best - the needs of your program will dictate that.

Upvotes: 0

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