Getting a list of values from a list of dicts

I have a list of dicts like this:

[{'value': 'apple', 'blah': 2}, 
 {'value': 'banana', 'blah': 3} , 
 {'value': 'cars', 'blah': 4}]

I want ['apple', 'banana', 'cars']

Whats the best way to do this?

Assuming every dict has a value key, you can write (assuming your list is named l)

[d['value'] for d in l]

If value might be missing, you can use

[d['value'] for d in l if 'value' in d]

Here's another way to do it using map() and lambda functions:

>>> map(lambda d: d['value'], l)

where l is the list. I see this way "sexiest", but I would do it using the list comprehension.

Update: In case that 'value' might be missing as a key use:

>>> map(lambda d: d.get('value', 'default value'), l)

Update: I'm also not a big fan of lambdas, I prefer to name things... this is how I would do it with that in mind:

>>> import operator
>>> get_value = operator.itemgetter('value')
>>> map(get_value, l)

I would even go further and create a sole function that explicitly says what I want to achieve:

>>> import operator, functools
>>> get_value = operator.itemgetter('value')
>>> get_values = functools.partial(map, get_value)
>>> get_values(l)
... [<list of values>]

With Python 3, since map returns an iterator, use list to return a list, e.g. list(map(operator.itemgetter('value'), l)).

[x['value'] for x in list_of_dicts]

For a very simple case like this, a comprehension, as in Ismail Badawi's answer is definitely the way to go.

But when things get more complicated, and you need to start writing multi-clause or nested comprehensions with complex expressions in them, it's worth looking into other alternatives. There are a few different (quasi-)standard ways to specify XPath-style searches on nested dict-and-list structures, such as JSONPath, DPath, and KVC. And there are nice libraries on PyPI for them.

Here's an example with the library named dpath, showing how it can simplify something just a bit more complicated:

>>> dd = {
...     'fruits': [{'value': 'apple', 'blah': 2}, {'value': 'banana', 'blah': 3}],
...     'vehicles': [{'value': 'cars', 'blah':4}]}

>>> {key: [{'value': d['value']} for d in value] for key, value in dd.items()}
{'fruits': [{'value': 'apple'}, {'value': 'banana'}],
 'vehicles': [{'value': 'cars'}]}

>>> dpath.util.search(dd, '*/*/value')
{'fruits': [{'value': 'apple'}, {'value': 'banana'}],
 'vehicles': [{'value': 'cars'}]}

Or, using jsonpath-ng:

>>> [d['value'] for key, value in dd.items() for d in value]
['apple', 'banana', 'cars']
>>> [m.value for m in jsonpath_ng.parse('*.[*].value').find(dd)]
['apple', 'banana', 'cars']

This one may not look quite as simple at first glance, because find returns match objects, which include all kinds of things besides just the matched value, such as a path directly to each item. But for more complex expressions, being able to specify a path like '*.[*].value' instead of a comprehension clause for each * can make a big difference. Plus, JSONPath is a language-agnostic specification, and there are even online testers that can be very handy for debugging.

Getting a list of values from a list of dicts

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