convert string to dictionary in python (passing dict as plain str)

Question

I have a string

test_string = "{Team A: [service1, service2], Team B: [service3, service4], Team 3: [service5, service6] }"

I want to know a way to convert this into a dictionary in python

Asked By: Ketan Bijwe

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Source

Answer 1

You can use the ast module

import ast

test_string = "{Team A: [service1, service2], Team B: [service3, service4], Team 3: [service5, service6] }"

# Wrap the string in curly braces to make it a valid dictionary literal
test_string = "{" + test_string + "}"

# Use ast.literal_eval to convert the string to a dictionary
result_dict = ast.literal_eval(test_string)

print(result_dict)

Output:

{'Team A': ['service1', 'service2'], 'Team B': ['service3', 'service4'], 'Team 3': ['service5', 'service6']}

Note that in the original string, the dictionary keys and values are not surrounded by quotes, so they will be interpreted as variable names. the keys are converted to strings and the values are assumed to be variables that are not defined in the current scope. If you want the dictionary keys and values to be treated as strings, you should surround them with quotes in the original string.

Answered By: ma9

Answer 2

You can use the eval() function to convert the string into a dictionary.

Here’s an example:

test_string = '{"Team A": ["service1", "service2"], "Team B": ["service3", "service4"], "Team 3": ["service5", "service6"] }'

dictionary = eval(test_string)

print(dictionary)

Output:

{'Team A': ['service1', 'service2'], 'Team B': ['service3', 'service4'], 'Team 3': ['service5', 'service6']}

Answered By: airdata

Answer 3

The yaml library is able to load this. It will turn all your items into strings, unless they are parseable in python:

import yaml

test_string = "{Team A: [service1, service2], Team B: [service3, service4], Team 3: [service5, service6] }"

parsed_dict = yaml.safe_load(test_string)
print(parsed_dict)

Outputs:

{'Team A': ['service1', 'service2'], 'Team B': ['service3', 'service4'], 'Team 3': ['service5', 'service6']}

Here is another example of what it may parse:

>>> yaml.safe_load("{a b c : [123, 99.0, a string, another]}")
{'a b c': [123, 99.0, 'a string', 'another']}

You should be aware that YAML (and so parsing with YAML) is a very complicated format that can have a lot of unintended effects. If possible you should find out if you can output JSON or some other serialised data from your Azure DevOps pipeline.

Answered By: Alex

Answer 4

You can just use regex. There is an example on the bottom on how to use specific dictionary parts

import re

test_string = "{Team A: [service1, service2], Team B: [service3, service4], Team 3: [service5, service6] }"

key_regex = r'([w ]+):' #matches key
value_regex = r'[([^]]+)]' #matches opening bracket then matches characters that are not a closing bracket and then matches closing bracket

pairs = re.findall(f'{key_regex}s*{value_regex}', test_string) #returns all non-overlapping matches of re in test_string

dictionary = {}

for key, value in pairs:
    key = key.strip() 
    value = value.split(', ') 
    dictionary[key] = value 

print(f"Full: {dictionary}") #outputs: {'Team A': ['service1', 'service2'], 'Team B': ['service3', 'service4'], 'Team 3': ['service5', 'service6']}

print(dictionary['Team A'])  #outputs: ['service1', 'service2']
print(dictionary['Team B'])  #outputs: ['service3', 'service4']
print(dictionary['Team 3'])  #outputs: ['service5', 'service6']

Answered By: Ietu

Answer 5

You could use a regular expression to break down the string into key and value substrings. Then build the dictionary by stripping the delimiters out and using split to convert the values to lists:

import re

S = "{Team A: [service1, service2], Team B: [service3, service4], Team 3: [service5, service6] }"

parts = filter(bool,re.split(r"([{,] *(?:[^,]+?:))",S))
D = {k.strip("{, :"):v.strip(" [],}").split(", ") for k,v in zip(parts,parts)}

print(D)
{'Team A': ['service1', 'service2'], 
 'Team B': ['service3', 'service4'], 
 'Team 3': ['service5', 'service6']}

The parts variable is an iterator on the substrings that is fed to zip twice to pair up consecutive substrings into a key and value

output of pairs (re.split with a capture group in the pattern includes separators in the output):

'{Team A:', ' [service1, service2]', 
', Team B:', ' [service3, service4]', 
', Team 3:', ' [service5, service6] }'

Answered By: Alain T.

convert string to dictionary in python (passing dict as plain str)

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