How to convert nested OrderedDict to Dict in Python?

Python is a popular programming language that is widely used in a variety of applications, including web development, data science, and machine learning. Its simplicity, flexibility, and ease of use make it an excellent choice for developers. One feature that makes Python stand out is the OrderedDict class, which is a dictionary subclass that remembers the order in which items are inserted. However, in some cases, we may need to convert the nested OrderedDict to a normal dict for further processing of the data.

In this tutorial, we will explain what a nested OrderedDict is and why it is necessary to convert it to a normal dictionary. We will introduce you to the process of converting a nested OrderedDict into a dictionary through a recursive method. We'll also provide examples of usage code and explain the benefits of using a normal dictionary instead of a nested OrderedDict. So, let’s dive into the next article and learn more about converting a nested OrderedDict into a dictionary.

What is OrderedDict?

OrderedDict is a subclass of a regular dictionary where the order of items is maintained. This means that the items in an OrderedDict are stored in the order they were added to the dictionary.

Now let us continue to explain nested ordered dictionaries. As the name suggests, a nested ordered dictionary is an ordered dictionary containing another ordered dictionary. This means that the values ​​in the external ordered dictionary are themselves ordered dictionaries. This is a useful data structure for representing nested or hierarchical data.

This is an example of nested OrderedDict:

from collections import OrderedDict

nested_odict = OrderedDict({
    'Name': 'John Doe',
    'Age': 25,
    'Contact': OrderedDict({
        'Email': 'johndoe@example.com',
        'Phone': '123-456-7890'
    }),
    'Address': OrderedDict({
        'Street': '123 Main St',
        'City': 'Anytown',
        'State': 'CA',
        'Zip': '12345'
    })
})

In the above example, we created a Nested OrderedDict to represent information about a person, including name, age, contact information, and address. The values ​​of the "Contact" and "Address" keys are themselves OrderedDicts.

The structure of a nested ordered dictionary can be as follows:

{
    'Name': 'John Doe',
    'Age': 25,
    'Contact': {
        'Email': 'johndoe@example.com',
        'Phone': '123-456-7890'
    },
    'Address': {
        'Street': '123 Main St',
        'City': 'Anytown',
        'State': 'CA',
        'Zip': '12345'
    }
}

Now that we have understood the structure of a nested ordered dictionary, let us understand how to convert this nested ordered dictionary into a normal dictionary using recursive method.

How to convert nested OrderedDict to dict?

One way to convert a nested OrderedDict to a dict is to use recursion. Recursion is a programming technique that involves function calls themselves. In this case, we could write a function that calls itself recursively to convert each nested OrderedDict into a normal dict.

Here is an example that demonstrates how to convert a nested OrderedDict to a dict using recursion:

def nested_odict_to_dict(nested_odict):
   # Convert the nested ordered dictionary into a regular dictionary and store it in the variable "result".
   result = dict(nested_odict)

   # Iterate through each key-value pair in the dictionary.
   for key, value in result.items():

       # Check if the value is an instance of the OrderedDict class.
       if isinstance(value, OrderedDict):
           # If the value is an instance of the OrderedDict class, recursively call the function on that value and store the returned dictionary in the "result" dictionary.
           result[key] = nested_odict_to_dict(value)
   return result

In the above code, we first create a regular dictionary from a Nested OrderedDict using the built-in dict() function. We then loop through each key-value pair in the dictionary and check if the value is an instance of OrderedDict. If it is, we call the same function recursively on that value and replace the value in the original dictionary with the returned regular dictionary.

Let’s break down the code and understand how it works:

result = dict(nested_odict)

This line of code creates a new dictionary (result) by converting the incoming ordered dictionary (nested_odict) into a normal dictionary.

for key, value in result.items():
    if isinstance(value, OrderedDict):
        result[key] = nested_odict_to_dict(value)

This loop iterates through all items in the result dictionary. For each key-value pair, it checks whether the value is an ordered dictionary. If so, the function calls itself recursively, passing in the sorted dictionary as an argument, and replacing the values ​​in the result with the returned dictionary.

Now let us understand it through an example.

Example of converting nested OrderedDict to Dict

Let’s take the same Nested OrderedDict we saw earlier and convert it to a regular dictionary using the nested_odict_to_dict() function:

from collections import OrderedDict

nested_odict = OrderedDict({
    'Name': 'John Doe',
    'Age': 25,
    'Contact': OrderedDict({
        'Email': 'johndoe@example.com',
        'Phone': '123-456-7890'
    }),
    'Address': OrderedDict({
        'Street': '123 Main St',
        'City': 'Anytown',
        'State': 'CA',
        'Zip': '12345'
    })
})

regular_dict = nested_odict_to_dict(nested_odict)
print(regular_dict)

The above code snippet creates a multi-level nested ordered dictionary nested_odict, and calls a function nested_odict_to_dict to convert it into a regular nested dictionary. The output of this code will be a nested dictionary with the same keys and values ​​as the original ordered dictionary nested_odict, but without the ordering guarantees.

Output

{
    'Name': 'John Doe',
    'Age': 25,
    'Contact': {
        'Email': 'johndoe@example.com',
        'Phone': '123-456-7890'
    },
    'Address': {
        'Street': '123 Main St',
        'City': 'Anytown',
        'State': 'CA',
        'Zip': '12345'
    }
}

As you can see, the Nested OrderedDict has been successfully converted to a regular dictionary using the nested_odict_to_dict() function.

in conclusion

In this article, we discussed how to convert a nested OrderedDict into a regular dict using recursive method. We explained what OrderedDict is, and what nested OrderedDicts are. We also provide an example of a nested OrderedDict representing personal information. In order to convert the nested OrderedDict to a regular dict, we used recursion to write a function that calls itself to convert each nested OrderedDict to a regular dict. We also provide an example that demonstrates how to use this function to convert the nested OrderedDict we created earlier into a regular dict. By converting a nested OrderedDict to a regular dict, we can simplify data processing and perform various operations more easily.

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