Filter dict to contain only certain keys?

This one liner lambda should work:

dictfilt = lambda x, y: dict([ (i,x[i]) for i in x if i in set(y) ])

Here's an example:

my_dict = {"a":1,"b":2,"c":3,"d":4}
wanted_keys = ("c","d")

# run it
In [10]: dictfilt(my_dict, wanted_keys)
Out[10]: {'c': 3, 'd': 4}

It's a basic list comprehension iterating over your dict keys (i in x) and outputs a list of tuple (key,value) pairs if the key lives in your desired key list (y). A dict() wraps the whole thing to output as a dict object.

If we want to make a new dictionary with selected keys removed, we can make use of dictionary comprehension
For example:

d = {
'a' : 1,
'b' : 2,
'c' : 3
}
x = {key:d[key] for key in d.keys() - {'c', 'e'}} # Python 3
y = {key:d[key] for key in set(d.keys()) - {'c', 'e'}} # Python 2.*
# x is {'a': 1, 'b': 2}
# y is {'a': 1, 'b': 2}

This seems to me the easiest way:

d1 = {'a':1, 'b':2, 'c':3}
d2 = {k:v for k,v in d1.items() if k in ['a','c']}

I like doing this to unpack the values too:

a, c = {k:v for k,v in d1.items() if k in ['a','c']}.values()

We can also achieve this by slightly more elegant dict comprehension:

my_dict = {"a":1,"b":2,"c":3,"d":4}

filtdict = {k: v for k, v in my_dict.items() if k.startswith('a')}
print(filtdict)

According to the title of the question, one would expect to filter the dictionary in place - a couple of answers suggest methods for doing that - still it's not obvious what is the one obvious way - I added some timings:

import random
import timeit
import collections

repeat = 3
numbers = 10000

setup = ''
def timer(statement, msg='', _setup=None):
    print(msg, min(
        timeit.Timer(statement, setup=_setup or setup).repeat(
            repeat, numbers)))

timer('pass', 'Empty statement')

dsize = 1000
d = dict.fromkeys(range(dsize))
keep_keys = set(random.sample(range(dsize), 500))
drop_keys = set(random.sample(range(dsize), 500))

def _time_filter_dict():
    """filter a dict"""
    global setup
    setup = r"""from __main__ import dsize, collections, drop_keys, \
keep_keys, random"""
    timer('d = dict.fromkeys(range(dsize));'
          'collections.deque((d.pop(k) for k in drop_keys), maxlen=0)',
          "pop inplace - exhaust iterator")
    timer('d = dict.fromkeys(range(dsize));'
          'drop_keys = [k for k in d if k not in keep_keys];'
          'collections.deque('
              '(d.pop(k) for k in list(d) if k not in keep_keys), maxlen=0)',
          "pop inplace - exhaust iterator (drop_keys)")
    timer('d = dict.fromkeys(range(dsize));'
          'list(d.pop(k) for k in drop_keys)',
          "pop inplace - create list")
    timer('d = dict.fromkeys(range(dsize));'
          'drop_keys = [k for k in d if k not in keep_keys];'
          'list(d.pop(k) for k in drop_keys)',
          "pop inplace - create list (drop_keys)")
    timer('d = dict.fromkeys(range(dsize))\n'
          'for k in drop_keys: del d[k]', "del inplace")
    timer('d = dict.fromkeys(range(dsize));'
          'drop_keys = [k for k in d if k not in keep_keys]\n'
          'for k in drop_keys: del d[k]', "del inplace (drop_keys)")
    timer("""d = dict.fromkeys(range(dsize))
{k:v for k,v in d.items() if k in keep_keys}""", "copy dict comprehension")
    timer("""keep_keys=random.sample(range(dsize), 5)
d = dict.fromkeys(range(dsize))
{k:v for k,v in d.items() if k in keep_keys}""",
          "copy dict comprehension - small keep_keys")

if __name__ == '__main__':
    _time_filter_dict()

results:

Empty statement 8.375600000000427e-05
pop inplace - exhaust iterator 1.046749841
pop inplace - exhaust iterator (drop_keys) 1.830537424
pop inplace - create list 1.1531293939999987
pop inplace - create list (drop_keys) 1.4512304149999995
del inplace 0.8008298079999996
del inplace (drop_keys) 1.1573763689999979
copy dict comprehension 1.1982901489999982
copy dict comprehension - small keep_keys 1.4407784069999998

So seems del is the winner if we want to update in place - the dict comprehension solution depends on the size of the dict being created of course and deleting half the keys is already too slow - so avoid creating a new dict if you can filter in place.

Edited to address a comment by @mpen - I calculated drop keys from keep_keys (given we do not have drop keys) - I assumed keep_keys/drop_keys are sets for this iteration or would take ages. With these assumptions del is still faster - but to be sure the moral is: if you have a (set, list, tuple) of drop keys, go for del

Short form:

[s.pop(k) for k in list(s.keys()) if k not in keep]

As most of the answers suggest in order to maintain the conciseness we have to create a duplicate object be it a list or dict. This one creates a throw-away list but deletes the keys in original dict.

You could use python-benedict, it's a dict subclass.

Installation: pip install python-benedict

from benedict import benedict

dict_you_want = benedict(your_dict).subset(keys=['firstname', 'lastname', 'email'])

It's open-source on GitHub: https://github.com/fabiocaccamo/python-benedict

^{Disclaimer: I'm the author of this library.}

If you know the negation set (aka not keys) in advance:

v = {'a': 'foo', 'b': 'bar', 'command': 'fizz', 'host': 'buzz'  }
args = {k: v[k] for k in v if k not in ["a", "b"]}
args # {'command': 'fizz', 'host': 'buzz'}

Here is another simple method using del in one liner:

for key in e_keys: del your_dict[key]

e_keys is the list of the keys to be excluded. It will update your dict rather than giving you a new one.

If you want a new output dict, then make a copy of the dict before deleting:

new_dict = your_dict.copy()           #Making copy of dict

for key in e_keys: del new_dict[key]

We can do simply with lambda function like this:

>>> dict_filter = lambda x, y: dict([ (i,x[i]) for i in x if i in set(y) ])
>>> large_dict = {"a":1,"b":2,"c":3,"d":4}
>>> new_dict_keys = ("c","d")
>>> small_dict=dict_filter(large_dict, new_dict_keys)
>>> print(small_dict)
{'c': 3, 'd': 4}
>>> 

This is my approach, supports nested fields like mongo query.

How to use:

>>> obj = { "a":1, "b":{"c":2,"d":3}}
>>> only(obj,["a","b.c"])
{'a': 1, 'b': {'c': 2}}

only function:

def only(object,keys):
    obj = {}
    for path in keys:
        paths = path.split(".")
        rec=''
        origin = object
        target = obj
        for key in paths:
            rec += key
            if key in target:
                target = target[key]
                origin = origin[key]
                rec += '.'
                continue
            if key in origin:
                if rec == path:
                    target[key] = origin[key]
                else:
                    target[key] = {}
                target = target[key]
                origin = origin[key]
                rec += '.'
            else:
                target[key] = None
                break
    return obj