How to merge two dictionaries that are with a dictionary in python?

Question

Below is the sample input from a huge file of similar inputs.

{
 "V-Su7890": [
 [
 {
 "url": "www.talent.com",
 "tid": "V-Su7890",
 "id": "58ff787ffbad487b2c",
 "company_name": "Talent Ltd"
 }
 ],
 [
 {
 "socials": ["facebook", "linkedin", "twitter"],
 "title": "title of the pag",
 "contact": ["[phone]"],
 "email": "email_id1"
 },
 {
 "socials": ["facebook", "twitter", "linkedin"],
 "title": "next title of the page",
 "contact": ["[phone]"],
 "email": "email_id2"
 }
 ]
 ]
}

I have to merge all subdictionaries of the second list of the current dictionary into one dictionary without duplicate values and then store the dictionary as a value to the key "V-Su7890".

The desired output is :

{
 "V-Su7890": [
 [
 {
 "url": "www.talent.com",
 "tid": "V-Su7890",
 "id": "58ff787ffbad487b2c",
 "company_name": "Talent Ltd"
 }
 ],
 [
 {
 "socials": ["facebook", "linkedin", "twitter"],
 "title": ["title of the pag", "next title of the page"],
 "contact": ["[phone]", "[phone]"],
 "email": ["email_id","email_id2"]
 }
 ]
 ]
}

Kindly help me understand and solve this.

• pvg: What have you tried so far and what problems have you run into?

Answer 1

You can use setdefault() to insert key with a value of default (here you can use empty list), and extend the list if the new item doesn't exist.

for k,v in a.items():
 tmp={}
 for i in v[1]:
 for k1,v2 in i.items():
 if isinstance(v2,list):
 tmp.setdefault(k1,[]).extend(i for i in v2 if i not in tmp[k1])
 else:
 tmp.setdefault(k1,[]).append(v2)
 a[k]=[v[0],[tmp]]
print(a)

Result:

{
 'V-Su7890': [
 ...
 [
 {
 'contact': ['[phone]','[phone]'],
 'socials': ['facebook','linkedin','twitter'],
 'email': ['email_id1','email_id2'],
 'title': ['title of the pag','next title of the page']
 }
 ]
 ]
}

• Niveram: Thanks but, This also combines the next record into previous dictionary. For example, { "V-Su7890":[..................],''V-SZ86385ZM':[.............]} and the values in the 'email' contains duplicates.
• McGrady: @Niveram i edit my answer, put tmp={} in the for loop, and it won't combine next record.
• Niveram: Great.. Thanks McGrady.
• Niveram: Hi McGrady, My input is {u'V-WW62364WT':[[{..............},[.........], u'V-YS87486IT': its values,u'V-SZ86385ZM': its values} is there a possibility to split at the keys so then the above code can work perfectly.

Answer 2

Let's assume you store the complete dict in a variable V. We store values for socials, title etc in a set to avoid duplicate values. Later on, we will convert the sets to list. Here's the solution:

V = k["V-Su7890"][1]
new_dict = {}
for v in V:
 for key, value in v.iteritems():
 if not new_dict.get(key, None):
 new_dict[key] = set()
 if isinstance(value, list):
 for val in value:
 new_dict[key].add(val)
 else:
 new_dict[key].add(value)
# Converting the sets to list
for key, value in new_dict.iteritems():
 new_dict[key] = list(value)
k["V-Su7890"][1] = [new_dict]

• Niveram: Sorry, I have a doubt. What is V = k["V-Su7890"][1] ? you mentioned as "store the complete dict in a variable V" but the file contains only lists of dictionaries as I have sampled above
• Charul: You have enclosed the original the list of dict inside curly braces which itself is a dict. { "V-Su7890": [...]}