How to merge dictionaries of dictionaries?
Here's an easy way to do it using generators:
def mergedicts(dict1, dict2):
for k in set(dict1.keys()).union(dict2.keys()):
if k in dict1 and k in dict2:
if isinstance(dict1[k], dict) and isinstance(dict2[k], dict):
yield (k, dict(mergedicts(dict1[k], dict2[k])))
else:
# If one of the values is not a dict, you can't continue merging it.
# Value from second dict overrides one in first and we move on.
yield (k, dict2[k])
# Alternatively, replace this with exception raiser to alert you of value conflicts
elif k in dict1:
yield (k, dict1[k])
else:
yield (k, dict2[k])
dict1 = {1:{"a":"A"},2:{"b":"B"}}
dict2 = {2:{"c":"C"},3:{"d":"D"}}
print dict(mergedicts(dict1,dict2))
This prints:
{1: {'a': 'A'}, 2: {'c': 'C', 'b': 'B'}, 3: {'d': 'D'}}
This is actually quite tricky - particularly if you want a useful error message when things are inconsistent, while correctly accepting duplicate but consistent entries (something no other answer here does..)
Assuming you don't have huge numbers of entries, a recursive function is easiest:
def merge(a, b, path=None):
"merges b into a"
if path is None: path = []
for key in b:
if key in a:
if isinstance(a[key], dict) and isinstance(b[key], dict):
merge(a[key], b[key], path + [str(key)])
elif a[key] == b[key]:
pass # same leaf value
else:
raise Exception('Conflict at %s' % '.'.join(path + [str(key)]))
else:
a[key] = b[key]
return a
# works
print(merge({1:{"a":"A"},2:{"b":"B"}}, {2:{"c":"C"},3:{"d":"D"}}))
# has conflict
merge({1:{"a":"A"},2:{"b":"B"}}, {1:{"a":"A"},2:{"b":"C"}})
note that this mutates a
- the contents of b
are added to a
(which is also returned). If you want to keep a
you could call it like merge(dict(a), b)
.
agf pointed out (below) that you may have more than two dicts, in which case you can use:
reduce(merge, [dict1, dict2, dict3...])
where everything will be added to dict1
.
Note: I edited my initial answer to mutate the first argument; that makes the "reduce" easier to explain
PS: In python 3, you will also need from functools import reduce
You could try mergedeep.
Installation
$ pip3 install mergedeep
Usage
from mergedeep import merge
a = {"keyA": 1}
b = {"keyB": {"sub1": 10}}
c = {"keyB": {"sub2": 20}}
merge(a, b, c)
print(a)
# {"keyA": 1, "keyB": {"sub1": 10, "sub2": 20}}
For a full list of options, check out the docs!