How To Convert A List Of Dictionaries To A Dictionary In Python

In this tutorial, you will learn how to convert a list of dictionaries to a dictionary in Python. This can be useful in various scenarios such as consolidating data from multiple sources or converting JSON data to a more usable format.

Step 1: Define the function

First, let’s define a function that takes a list of dictionaries as its input and outputs a single dictionary.

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def merge_dicts(dict_list):
    result = {}
    for d in dict_list:
        result.update(d)
    return result

This function performs the task by iterating through each dictionary in the input list and updating the result dictionary with the key-value pairs of the current dictionary.

Step 2: Use the function

Now, let’s create an example list of dictionaries and use the function we just defined to merge these dictionaries.

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example_dicts = [
    {"name": "Alice", "age": 30},
    {"city": "New York", "state": "NY"},
    {"country": "USA", "continent": "North America"}
]
 
output_dict = merge_dicts(example_dicts)
print(output_dict)

When you run this code, it will display the following output:

{'name': 'Alice', 'age': 30, 'city': 'New York', 'state': 'NY', 'country': 'USA', 'continent': 'North America'}

Congratulations, you have successfully merged the list of dictionaries into a single dictionary!

Full Code

Here’s the complete code:

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def merge_dicts(dict_list):
    result = {}
    for d in dict_list:
        result.update(d)
    return result
 
example_dicts = [
    {"name": "Alice", "age": 30},
    {"city": "New York", "state": "NY"},
    {"country": "USA", "continent": "North America"}
]
 
output_dict = merge_dicts(example_dicts)
print(output_dict)

And the output:

{'name': 'Alice', 'age': 30, 'city': 'New York', 'state': 'NY', 'country': 'USA', 'continent': 'North America'}

Conclusion

In this tutorial, you learned how to convert a list of dictionaries to a dictionary in Python by defining a function that iterates through each dictionary in the list and updates a result dictionary with the key-value pairs. This method can be useful in various data processing tasks, such as consolidating data from different sources or converting JSON data to a more usable format.