An element in a dictionary is also called an item. Each item is made up of a key and a value.
The three dictionary methods; items()
, keys()
and values()
retrieves all items, keys and values respectively.
-
items()
- Returns an iterable of all key-value pairs(items) present in the dictionary. -
keys()
- Returns an iterable with all the keys in the dictionary. -
values()
- Returns an iterable with all the values in the dictionary.
items() - Get all items present in a dictionary
To get an iterable containing all the items present in a dictionary, use theitems()
method. The syntax is as shown below:
d.items()
The method does not take any argument.
d = {
'Spain': 'Madrid',
'Italy': 'Rome',
'France': 'paris'
}
#get the items
all_items = d.items()
print(all_items)
The items()
method is useful when it comes to iterating over the dictionary items. Remember that iterating over a dictionary only yields its keys, so using the items()
method allows you to access both the key and its corresponding value in one iteration.
iterating through a dictionary
d = {
'Spain': 'Madrid',
'Italy': 'Rome',
'France': 'paris'
}
for i in d:
print(i)
In the above example, we used the for loop to iterate over a dictionary. As you can see, only the keys are returned. Now consider the same example with the items()
method.
iterating over items()
d = {
'Spain': 'Madrid',
'Italy': 'Rome',
'France': 'paris'
}
for i in d.items():
print(i)
As you can see, iterating through the items()
object returns tuples in the form (key, value)
for each dictionary item.
keys() - get all keys of a dictionary
Thekeys()
method returns an object containing all the keys present in a dictionary.
it has the following syntax:
d.keys()
The method does not take any arguments.
d = {
'Spain': 'Madrid',
'Italy': 'Rome',
'France': 'paris'
}
#get the keys
all_keys = d.keys()
print(all_keys)
print(type(all_keys))
You can iterate through the returned object to get individual keys at each iteration.
d = {
'Spain': 'Madrid',
'Italy': 'Rome',
'France': 'paris'
}
#iterate through the keys
for k in d.keys():
print(k)
values() - get all values in the dictionary
Finally, the values()
method returns an object containing all the keys in the dictionary. It has the following syntax:
d.values()
The method does not take arguments.
d = {
'Spain': 'Madrid',
'Italy': 'Rome',
'France': 'paris'
}
#get the keys
all_values = d.values()
print(all_values)
print(type(all_values))
iterate through the values
d = {
'Spain': 'Madrid',
'Italy': 'Rome',
'France': 'paris'
}
#iterate through the keys
for v in d.values():
print(v)
Conclusion
- Use
items()
to get an iterable of two length tuples, where each tuple contains a key and a value of a dictionary item. - Use
keys()
to get an iterable of all the keys present in a dictionary. - use
values()
to get an iterable of all the values present in a dictionary.
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