I have this list of dictionary
dictList = [ {'value': 'me'}, {'value': 'you'}, {'value': 'him'}, {'value': 'her'}, {'value': 'them'}, {'value': 'they'} ] I know how to get the value given the key like this
print(item for item in dictlist if item["value"] == "me").next() which prints out
{'value': 'me'} However I want to print just the 'me' 'you' etc and not 'value'. So the result looks like
{'me', 'you', 'him', 'her','them', 'they'} Thanks
for d in dictList: if 'value' in d: print d['value'] You can extract the values you are looking for with a list comprehension, or use it as a generator expression if you don't need to preserve it
[d['value'] for d in dictList if 'value' in d] this will only do the d['value'] lookup if the key 'value' exists in the dict
If you know that all of the dicts will have that key, you can drop the filter
[d['value'] for d in dictList] Another approach is to collect values() from all dictionaries in the list. This will work regardless of what keys are used (you use "value").
>>> dictList = [ {'value': 'me'}, {'value': 'you'}, {'value': 'him'}, {'value': 'her'}, {'value': 'them'}, {'value': 'they'} ] >>> [dct.values()[0] for dct in dictList] ['me', 'you', 'him', 'her', 'them', 'they'] 
reduceIf you like very unreadable method, here is one:
>>> reduce(list.__add__, map(dict.values, dictList)) >>> ['me', 'you', 'him', 'her', 'them', 'they'] Explained:
dict.values: this is method, which is usually applied to a dictionary in the way: {"key": 12, "sleutel": 44}.values() and returns only values for all the keys in the dict, thus [12, 44].
By dict.values we refer explicitly to that method and call map to apply this to each item in your dictList.
From map(dict.values, dictList) you get [['me'], ['you'], ['him'], ['her'], ['them'], ['they']].
Then you add one sublist to another.
['me'] + ['you'] + ['him'] + ['her'] + ['them'] + ['they']
To do that on a list, use reduce, which takes works in the way:
>>> res = ['me'] + ['you'] >>> res = res + ['him'] >>> res = res + ['her'] >>> res = res + ['them'] >>> res = res + ['they'] and finally you get what you asked for.
sumThe solution can be shortened by means of sum providing initial value of []:
>>> sum(map(dict.values, dictList), []) >>> ['me', 'you', 'him', 'her', 'them', 'they'] Another list of dicts problem! Try using the pandas package to simply refer to keys as column headers and group values using the same key:
import pandas as pd dictList = [ {'value': 'me'}, {'value': 'you'}, {'value': 'him'}, {'value': 'her'}, {'value': 'them'}, {'value': 'they'} ] df = pd.DataFrame(dictList) dictList_values = df['value'].tolist() Added some benchmarking, using pandas outperforms on large scale sets. Here I've created a set with 200k entries as a "large" case. The small case is the given 6 entries:
setup_large = "dictList = [];\ [dictList.extend(({'value': 'me'}, {'value': 'you'}, {'value': 'him'},\ {'value': 'her'}, {'value': 'them'}, {'value': 'they'})) for _ in range(25000)];\ from operator import itemgetter;import pandas as pd;\ df = pd.DataFrame(dictList);" setup_small = "dictList = [];\ dictList.extend(({'value': 'me'}, {'value': 'you'}, {'value': 'him'},\ {'value': 'her'}, {'value': 'them'}, {'value': 'they'}));\ from operator import itemgetter;import pandas as pd;\ df = pd.DataFrame(dictList);" method1 = "[d['value'] for d in dictList if 'value' in d]" method2 = "df['value'].tolist()" import timeit t = timeit.Timer(method1, setup_small) print('Small Method LC: ' + str(t.timeit(100))) t = timeit.Timer(method2, setup_small) print('Small Method Pandas: ' + str(t.timeit(100))) t = timeit.Timer(method1, setup_large) print('Large Method LC: ' + str(t.timeit(100))) t = timeit.Timer(method2, setup_large) print('Large Method Pandas: ' + str(t.timeit(100))) #Small Method LC: 0.000217914581299 #Small Method Pandas: 0.00168395042419 #Large Method LC: 3.89074897766 #Large Method Pandas: 0.189871072769 
set, so the original ordering will be lost