Comparing 2 lists consisting of dictionaries with unique keys in python

by

Assuming that the dicts line up like in your example input, you can use the zip() function to get a list of associated pairs of dicts, then you can use any() to check if there is a difference:

>>> list_1 = [{'unique_id':'001', 'key1':'AAA', 'key2':'BBB', 'key3':'EEE'}, 
              {'unique_id':'002', 'key1':'AAA', 'key2':'CCC', 'key3':'FFF'}]
>>> list_2 = [{'unique_id':'001', 'key1':'AAA', 'key2':'DDD', 'key3':'EEE'},
              {'unique_id':'002', 'key1':'AAA', 'key2':'CCC', 'key3':'FFF'}]
>>> pairs = zip(list_1, list_2)
>>> any(x != y for x, y in pairs)
True

Or to get the differing pairs:

>>> [(x, y) for x, y in pairs if x != y]
[({'key3': 'EEE', 'key2': 'BBB', 'key1': 'AAA', 'unique_id': '001'}, {'key3': 'EEE', 'key2': 'DDD', 'key1': 'AAA', 'unique_id': '001'})]

You can even get the keys which don’t match for each pair:

>>> [[k for k in x if x[k] != y[k]] for x, y in pairs if x != y]
[['key2']]

Possibly together with the associated values:

>>> [[(k, x[k], y[k]) for k in x if x[k] != y[k]] for x, y in pairs if x != y]
[[('key2', 'BBB', 'DDD')]]

NOTE: In case your input lists are not sorted yet, you can do that easily as well:

>>> from operator import itemgetter
>>> list_1, list_2 = [sorted(l, key=itemgetter('unique_id')) 
                      for l in (list_1, list_2)]

More Related Contents:

  1. I don’t know how to display step 3 for this assignment
  2. How to make a dict from n’th indices of tuples in list
  3. Access a particular field in arbitrarily nested JSON data [duplicate]
  4. Remove duplicate dict in list in Python
  5. How to avoid “RuntimeError: dictionary changed size during iteration” error?
  6. list to dictionary conversion with multiple values per key?
  7. How can I convert a dictionary into a list of tuples?
  8. List of dicts to/from dict of lists
  9. Appending a dictionary to a list – I see a pointer like behavior
  10. merging Python dictionaries
  11. How can I initialize a dictionary of distinct empty lists in Python?
  12. List of tuples to dictionary [duplicate]
  13. [] and {} vs list() and dict(), which is better?
  14. Converting Dictionary to List? [duplicate]
  15. How to find the min/max value of a common key in a list of dicts?
  16. Converting a list of tuples into a dict
  17. Appending a dictionary to a list in a loop
  18. How to compare a list of lists/sets in python?
  19. One liner: creating a dictionary from list with indices as keys
  20. Group by multiple keys and summarize/average values of a list of dictionaries
  21. Get a list of values from a list of dictionaries?
  22. Remove dictionary from list
  23. How do I sort this list in Python, if my date is in a String?
  24. How do I extract all the values of a specific key from a list of dictionaries?
  25. What are dict_keys, dict_items and dict_values?
  26. How do I send list of dictionary as Body parameter in FastAPI?
  27. Python The appended element in the list changes as its original variable changes
  28. Python Accessing Values in A List of Dictionaries
  29. How to extract all values from a dictionary in Python?
  30. How to create a nested dictionary from a list in Python?

Leave a Comment