Question

I am stuck with the following data.

There is a list.

[{name: '/', children: [{name: 'bin'}, {name: 'sbin'}, {name: 'home'}]},
{name: 'home', children: [{name: 'user1'}, {name: 'user2'}]},
{name: 'user2', children: [{name: 'desktop'}]}]

I want to convert above list to the following dictionary.

{name: '/', children: [{name: '/bin'}, {name: '/sbin'}, {name: '/home', children: [{name: 'user1'}, {name: 'user2', children: [{name: 'desktop'}]}]}]}

I write some codes to convert data above style.

def recT(data, child, parent, collector):
    dparent = dict(name=parent)
    dchildren = dict()
    lst = []
    for c in child:
        lst.append(dict(name=c['name']))
        for d in data:
            if c['name'] == d['name']:
                if len(d) > 1:
                    dchildren.update(dict(children=recT(data, d['children'], d['name'], collector)))
    dparent.update(dchildren)
    collector.update(dparent)
    return lst

Then,

myd = dict()
for d in data2:
    if len(d) > 1:
        recT(data2, d['children'], d['name'], myd)

NOTE: data2 is dictionary list I want to covert.

But, the output dictionary is the last record in list:

{'children': [{'name': 'desktop'}], 'name': 'user2'}

Please help.

Answer 1

As lazyr said, you can’t duplicate keys in your dict like that. You could convert it to a format like the following to be valid python dict syntax:

{
  '/': {
    'bin': {}, 
    'sbin': {}, 
    'home': {
      'user1': {},
      'user2': {
        'desktop': {}
      }
  }
}

The reason you’re only getting the last record in the list is because your dict uses unique keys

mydict = {}
mydict['name'] = 1
mydict['name'] # is 1
mydict['name'] = 2

for x,y in mydict.iteritems():
  print '{0}: {1}'.format(x,y)
>> name: 2 # Note only one entry