Try to get hierarchical string structure into dict

Question

I'm pretty new to python and now for 2 days, I'm struggling with getting a hierarchical based string structure into a python dict/list structure to handle it better:

Example Strings:

Operating_System/Linux/Apache
Operating_System/Linux/Nginx
Operating_System/Windows/Docker
Operating_System/FreeBSD/Nginx

What I try to achieve is to split each string up and pack it into a python dict, that should be something like:

{'Operating_System': [{'Linux': ['Apache', 'Nginx']}, {'Windows': ['Docker']}, {'FreeBSD': ['Nginx']}]}

I tried multiple ways, including zip() and some ways by string split('/') and then doing it by nested iteration but I could not yet solve it. Does anyone know a good/elegant way to achieve something like this with python3 ?

best regards,

Chris

Are the number of delimiters fixed at 2 or can there be greater nesting in the resulting dictionaries than there is in your example? — John Coleman
– John Coleman, Commented May 13, 2020 at 11:25

sammywemmy · Accepted Answer · 2020-05-13 12:00:45Z

3

one way about it ... defaultdict could help here :

#assumption is that it is a collection of strings
strings = ["Operating_System/Linux/Apache",
"Operating_System/Linux/Nginx",
"Operating_System/Windows/Docker",
"Operating_System/FreeBSD/Nginx"]

from collections import defaultdict
d = defaultdict(dict)
e = defaultdict(list)
m = [entry.split('/') for entry in strings]

print(m)

[['Operating_System', 'Linux', 'Apache'],
 ['Operating_System', 'Linux', 'Nginx'],
 ['Operating_System', 'Windows', 'Docker'],
 ['Operating_System', 'FreeBSD', 'Nginx']]

for a,b,c in m:
    e[b].append(c)
    d[a] = e

print(d)

defaultdict(dict,
            {'Operating_System': defaultdict(list,
                         {'Linux': ['Apache', 'Nginx'],
                          'Windows': ['Docker'],
                          'FreeBSD': ['Nginx']})})

if u want them exactly as u shared in ur output, u could skip the defaultdict(dict) part :

mapp = {'Operating_System':[{k:v} for k,v in e.items()]}
mapp

{'Operating_System': [{'Linux': ['Apache', 'Nginx']},
  {'Windows': ['Docker']},
  {'FreeBSD': ['Nginx']}]

}

this post was also useful

edited May 13, 2020 at 12:00

answered May 13, 2020 at 11:38

sammywemmy

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1 Comment

Koren D Over a year ago

Wow! Thank you very much. I didn't know defaultdict and that is very helpful

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