Python nested dictionary not keeping elements in order

Question

I've been trying to create an input library for Selenium using the nested dictionary data type, and while at first it was working perfectly I am now realizing I have gotten myself into a position where I cannot be assured that my elements will stay in order (which is very necessary for this library).

Here is an example of how I am trying to structure this code:

qlib = {
        'code_xp': 
          {'keywords': 
            {'javascript':0, 
             'web design':1,
             'python':0},
           'answer':
            {'4',
             'yes'}}
}

for prompt, info in qlib.items()
  for t, i in enumerate(list(info['answer'])):
    if t == 0:
      try:
        print(i)
      except:
        pass

If you run this yourself, you will soon realize that after a few runs it will have rearranged the output from the list ['4', 'yes'], switching between ['4'] to ['yes']. Given that I depend on only referencing the first element for certain inputs ('4'), I can't allow this.

As for the 'keywords' section, I have used the structure i.e. 'javascript':0 as a necessary tag element for data processing. While this is not relevant for this problem, any solution would have to account for this. Here is my full data processing engine for those that would like to see the original context. Please note this comes before the 'for' loop listed above:

trs = 'translate(., "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ", "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz")'
input_type = ['numeric', 'text', 'multipleChoice', 'multipleChoice']
element_type = ['label', 'label', 'label', 'legend']

for index, item in enumerate(input_type):
  print(f"Current input: {item}")
  form_number = driver.find_elements(By.XPATH,'//' +element_type[index]+ '[starts-with(@for, "urn:li:fs_easyApplyFormElement")][contains(@for, "' +item+ '")]')
  if form_number:
    print(item)
  for link in form_number:
    for prompt, info in qlib.items():
      keywords = info['keywords']
      full_path = []
      for i, word in enumerate(keywords):
        path = 'contains(' +trs+ ', "' +word+ '")'
        if i < len(keywords) - 1:
          if keywords[word] == 1:
            path += " and"
          elif keywords[word] == 0:
            path += " or"
        full_path.append(path)
      full_string = ' '.join(full_path)
      answer = ' '.join(info['answer'])

I've been trying to find the right datatype for this code for a while now, and while this almost works perfectly the problem I'm facing makes it unusable. I've considered an OrderedDict as well, however I am not confident I can keep the structures that I depend on. Looking for anything that will work. Thank you so much for any help!

Python nested dictionary not keeping elements in order

0 Answers