Get key by value in dictionary

Question

I made a function which will look up ages in a Dictionary and show the matching name:

dictionary = {'george' : 16, 'amber' : 19}
search_age = raw_input("Provide age")
for age in dictionary.values():
    if age == search_age:
        name = dictionary[age]
        print name

I know how to compare and find the age I just don't know how to show the name of the person. Additionally, I am getting a KeyError because of line 5. I know it's not correct but I can't figure out how to make it search backwards.

Answer 1

here is my take on it. This is good for displaying multiple results just in case you need one. So I added the list as well

myList = {'george':16,'amber':19, 'rachel':19, 
           'david':15 }                         #Setting the dictionary
result=[]                                       #Making ready of the result list
search_age = int(input('Enter age '))

for keywords in myList.keys():
    if myList[keywords] ==search_age:
    result.append(keywords)                    #This part, we are making list of results

for res in result:                             #We are now printing the results
    print(res)

And that's it...

Answer 2

I thought it would be interesting to point out which methods are the quickest, and in what scenario:

Here's some tests I ran (on a 2012 MacBook Pro)

>>> def method1(list,search_age):
...     for name,age in list.iteritems():
...             if age == search_age:
...                     return name
... 
>>> def method2(list,search_age):
...     return [name for name,age in list.iteritems() if age == search_age]
... 
>>> def method3(list,search_age):
...     return list.keys()[list.values().index(search_age)]

Results from profile.run() on each method 100000 times:

Method 1:

>>> profile.run("for i in range(0,100000): method1(list,16)")
     200004 function calls in 1.173 seconds

Method 2:

>>> profile.run("for i in range(0,100000): method2(list,16)")
     200004 function calls in 1.222 seconds

Method 3:

>>> profile.run("for i in range(0,100000): method3(list,16)")
     400004 function calls in 2.125 seconds

So this shows that for a small dict, method 1 is the quickest. This is most likely because it returns the first match, as opposed to all of the matches like method 2 (see note below).

---

Interestingly, performing the same tests on a dict I have with 2700 entries, I get quite different results (this time run 10000 times):

Method 1:

>>> profile.run("for i in range(0,10000): method1(UIC_CRS,'7088380')")
     20004 function calls in 2.928 seconds

Method 2:

>>> profile.run("for i in range(0,10000): method2(UIC_CRS,'7088380')")
     20004 function calls in 3.872 seconds

Method 3:

>>> profile.run("for i in range(0,10000): method3(UIC_CRS,'7088380')")
     40004 function calls in 1.176 seconds

So here, method 3 is much faster. Just goes to show the size of your dict will affect which method you choose.

Notes: Method 2 returns a list of all names, whereas methods 1 and 3 return only the first match. I have not considered memory usage. I'm not sure if method 3 creates 2 extra lists (keys() and values()) and stores them in memory.

Answer 3

You need to use a dictionary and reverse of that dictionary. It means you need another data structure. If you are in python 3, use enum module but if you are using python 2.7 use enum34 which is back ported for python 2.

Example:

from enum import Enum

class Color(Enum): 
    red = 1 
    green = 2 
    blue = 3

>>> print(Color.red) 
Color.red

>>> print(repr(Color.red)) 
<color.red: 1=""> 

>>> type(Color.red) 
<enum 'color'=""> 
>>> isinstance(Color.green, Color) 
True 

>>> member = Color.red 
>>> member.name 
'red' 
>>> member.value 
1 

Answer 4

There is no easy way to find a key in a list by 'looking up' the value. However, if you know the value, iterating through the keys, you can look up values in the dictionary by the element. If D[element] where D is a dictionary object, is equal to the key you're trying to look up, you can execute some code.

D = {'Ali': 20, 'Marina': 12, 'George':16}
age = int(input('enter age:\t'))  
for element in D.keys():
    if D[element] == age:
        print(element)

Answer 5

Try this one-liner to reverse a dictionary:

reversed_dictionary = dict(map(reversed, dictionary.items()))

Answer 6

Cat Plus Plus mentioned that this isn't how a dictionary is intended to be used. Here's why:

The definition of a dictionary is analogous to that of a mapping in mathematics. In this case, a dict is a mapping of K (the set of keys) to V (the values) - but not vice versa. If you dereference a dict, you expect to get exactly one value returned. But, it is perfectly legal for different keys to map onto the same value, e.g.:

d = { k1 : v1, k2 : v2, k3 : v1}

When you look up a key by it's corresponding value, you're essentially inverting the dictionary. But a mapping isn't necessarily invertible! In this example, asking for the key corresponding to v1 could yield k1 or k3. Should you return both? Just the first one found? That's why indexof() is undefined for dictionaries.

If you know your data, you could do this. But an API can't assume that an arbitrary dictionary is invertible, hence the lack of such an operation.