How to Efficiently Search for a Specific Dictionary in a Python List of Dictionaries?

Searching Dictionaries in a List Using Python

Consider a list of dictionaries as an example:

dicts = [
    {"name": "Tom", "age": 10},
    {"name": "Mark", "age": 5},
    {"name": "Pam", "age": 7},
]

Problem: How do you search for and retrieve the dictionary where the "name" key equals "Pam"?

Solution:

Using a generator expression, you can iterate over the list of dictionaries and filter out the one you need:

match = next(item for item in dicts if item["name"] == "Pam")

print(match)
# {"name": "Pam", "age": 7}

Handling Non-Existence:

If it's possible that the name you're searching for doesn't exist in the list, you can use the next() function with a default argument:

match = next((item for item in dicts if item["name"] == "Pam"), None)

if match:
    print(match)
else:
    print("No matching dictionary found.")

Alternative Approaches:

• You can enumerate the list to get the index of the matching dictionary:

index = next((i for i, item in enumerate(dicts) if item["name"] == "Pam"), None)

print(f"Matching dictionary at index {index}")

• You can use additional filtering criteria in the generator expression to perform more complex searches.

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