Passing selected arguments from a dictionary to a function

Question

Given a set of functions that differ in their signatures and a dictionary that contains (key, value) pairs for each of the required arguments, I want to find an elegant way of passing the dictionary to each function, so that each function may use the parameters from the function it requires.

def first_function(name, age):
    print(name, " ", age)

def second_function(name, gender):
    print(name, " ", gender)

param_dict = {'name': 'Max', 'age': 23, 'gender':'m'}

Passing the param_dict to the function by specifying second_function(**param_dict) throws an error as neither function requires for all three parameters. Is there an elegant solution, such that each functions 'extracts' the parameters it requires?

C.Nivs · Accepted Answer · 2019-06-19 19:08:25Z

6

You can simply pass **kwargs as a third arg to get around this problem, since it will consume what it needs out of the dictionary, the rest will remain collected in the kwargs dict:

def first_function(name, age, **kwargs):
    print(name, age)

def second_function(name, gender, **kwargs):
    print(name, gender)

param_dict = {'name': 'Max', 'age': 23, 'gender':'m'}

first_function(**param_dict)
# Max 23

second_function(**param_dict)
# Max m

answered Jun 19, 2019 at 19:08

C.Nivs

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