Question

I want to create a dict which can be accessed as:

d[id_1][id_2][id_3] = amount

As of now I have a huge ugly function:

 def parse_dict(id1,id2,id3,principal, data_dict):
        if data_dict.has_key(id1):
           values = data_dict[id1]
           if values.has_key[id2]
              ..
        else:
            inner_inner_dict = {}
             # and so on

What is the pythonic way to do this?

note, that i input the principal.. but what i want is the amount..
So if all the three keys are there.. add principal to the previous amount!

Thanks

Answer 1

You may want to consider using defaultdict:

For example:

json_dict = defaultdict(lambda: defaultdict(dict))

will create a defaultdict of defaultdicts of dicts (I know..but it is right), to access it, you can simply do:

json_dict['context']['name']['id'] = '42'

without having to resort to using if...else to initialize.