How to check if a variable is a dictionary in Python?

python dictionary
Riley picture Riley · Aug 10, 2014 · Viewed 314.7k times · Source

How would you check if a variable is a dictionary in python?

For example, I'd like it to loop through the values in the dictionary until it finds a dictionary. Then, loop through the one it finds:

dict = {'abc': 'abc', 'def': {'ghi': 'ghi', 'jkl': 'jkl'}}
for k, v in dict.iteritems():
    if ###check if v is a dictionary:
        for k, v in v.iteritems():
            print(k, ' ', v)
    else:
        print(k, ' ', v)

Answer

Padraic Cunningham picture Padraic Cunningham · Aug 10, 2014

You could use if type(ele) is dict or use isinstance(ele, dict) which would work if you had subclassed dict:

d = {'abc':'abc','def':{'ghi':'ghi','jkl':'jkl'}}
for ele in d.values():
    if isinstance(ele,dict):
       for k, v in ele.items():
           print(k,' ',v)

Related questions

Iterating over dictionaries using 'for' loops

I am a bit puzzled by the following code: d = {'x': 1, 'y': 2, 'z': 3} for key in d: print key, 'corresponds to', d[key] What I don't understand is the key portion. How does Python recognize that it needs only to …

Read More
Check if a given key already exists in a dictionary

I wanted to test if a key exists in a dictionary before updating the value for the key. I wrote the following code: if 'key1' in dict.keys(): print "blah" else: print "boo" I think this is not the …

Read More
How can I add new keys to a dictionary?

Is it possible to add a key to a Python dictionary after it has been created? It doesn't seem to have an .add() method.

Read More