I would like to convert a POST from Webob MultiDict to nested dictionary. E.g.
So from a POST of:
'name=Kyle&phone.number=1234&phone.type=home&phone.number=5678&phone.type=work'
to a multidict;
[('name', 'Kyle'), ('phone.number', '1234'), ('phone.type', 'home'), ('phone.number', '5678'), ('phone.type', 'work')]
to a nested dictionary
{'name': 'Kyle',
'phone': [
{
'number': '12345',
'type': 'home',
},{
'number': '5678',
'type': 'work',
},
Any ideas?
EDIT
I ended up extracting the variable_decode
method from the formencode package as posted by Will.
The only change that was required is to make the lists explicit, E.g.
'name=Kyle&phone-1.number=1234&phone-1.type=home&phone-2.number=5678&phone-2.type=work'
Which is better for many reasons.
If you have formencode installed or can install it, checkout out their variabledecode module
I haven't had the time to test it and it's quite restrictive, but hopefully this will work (I'm only posting because it's been a while since you posted the question):
>>> def toList(s):
... answer = []
... L = s.split("&")
... for i in L:
... answer.append(tuple(i.split('=')))
... return answer
>>> def toDict(L):
... answer = {}
... answer[L[0][0]] = L[0][1]
... for i in L[1:]:
... pk,sk = L[i][0].split('.')
... if pk not in answer:
... answer[pk] = []
... if sk not in answer[pk][-1]:
... answer[pk][sk] = L[i][1]
... else:
... answer[pk].append({sk:L[i][1]})
If this is not 100%, it should at least get you on a good start.
Hope this helps
I prefer an explicit way to solve your problem:
Divide the members which belong to the same structure (or dict) into a same group with same field name, like
'name=Kyle&phone1=1234&phone1=home&phone2=5678&phone2=work'
The order of the fields in the form is guaranteed, so the multidict will be:
(('name', 'Kyle'), ('phone1', '1234', 'home'), ('phone2', '5678', 'work'))
Then the code will be like:
def extract(key, values):
extractor = {
"name":str,
"phone":lambda *args:dict(zip(('number', 'type'), args)
}
trimed_key = re.match(r"^(\w+)", key).group(1)
return trimed_key, extractor(trimed_key, *values)
nested_dict = {}
for i in multidict():
key, values = i[0], i[1:]
nested_dict.setdefault(key, [])
trimed_key, data_wanted = extract(key, values)
nested_dict[trimed_key].append(data_wanted)
for key in nested_dict:
if len(nested_dict[key]) == 1:
nested_dict[key] = nested_dict[key][0]