Accessing values nested within dictionaries

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I have a dictionary which contains dictionaries, which may also contain dictionaries, e.g.

dictionary = {'ID': 0001, 'Name': 'made up name', 'Transactions':
               {'Transaction Ref': 'a1', 'Transaction Details':
                  {'Bill To': 'abc', 'Ship To': 'def', 'Product': 'Widget A'
                      ...} ...} ... }

Currently I'm unpacking to get the 'Bill To' for ID 001, 'Transaction Ref' a1 as follows:

if dictionary['ID'] == 001:
    transactions = dictionary['Transactions']
        if transactions['Transaction Ref'] == 'a1':
            transaction_details = transactions['Transaction Details']
            bill_to = transaction_details['Bill To']

I can't help but think this is is a little clunky, especially the last two lines - I feel like something along the lines of the following should work:

bill_to = transactions['Transaction Details']['Bill To']

Is there a simpler approach for drilling down into nested dictionaries without having to unpack into interim variables?

dictionary nested python
4 Answers

You can access nested dictionaries with a tuple using NestedDict.

>>> from ndicts.ndicts import NestedDict
>>> nested_dict = {"a": {"a": 0, "b": 1},
...                "b": {"a": 2, "b": 3}}
>>> nd = NestedDict(nested_dict)
>>> nd["a", "a"]
0
>>> nd["b", "a"]
2
>>> nd["a"]
{"a": 0, "b": 1}

To install ndicts:

pip install ndicts
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