filter items in a python dictionary where keys contain a specific string

You can use the built-in filter function to filter dictionaries, lists, etc. based on specific conditions.

filtered_dict = dict(filter(lambda item: filter_str in item[0], d.items()))

The advantage is that you can use it for different data structures.

How about a dict comprehension:

filtered_dict = {k:v for k,v in d.iteritems() if filter_string in k}

One you see it, it should be self-explanatory, as it reads like English pretty well.

This syntax requires Python 2.7 or greater.

In Python 3, there is only dict.items(), not iteritems() so you would use:

filtered_dict = {k:v for (k,v) in d.items() if filter_string in k}

Go for whatever is most readable and easily maintainable. Just because you can write it out in a single line doesn't mean that you should. Your existing solution is close to what I would use other than I would user iteritems to skip the value lookup, and I hate nested ifs if I can avoid them:

for key, val in d.iteritems():
    if filter_string not in key:
        continue
    # do something

However if you realllly want something to let you iterate through a filtered dict then I would not do the two step process of building the filtered dict and then iterating through it, but instead use a generator, because what is more pythonic (and awesome) than a generator?

First we create our generator, and good design dictates that we make it abstract enough to be reusable:

# The implementation of my generator may look vaguely familiar, no?
def filter_dict(d, filter_string):
    for key, val in d.iteritems():
        if filter_string not in key:
            continue
        yield key, val

And then we can use the generator to solve your problem nice and cleanly with simple, understandable code:

for key, val in filter_dict(d, some_string):
    # do something

In short: generators are awesome.