Python - Flatten Nested Dictionary to Matrix

Python - Flatten Nested Dictionary to Matrix

Flattening a nested dictionary to a matrix in Python involves iterating over the dictionary, extracting keys and values, and organizing them into a two-dimensional array or list structure. This can be particularly useful for data processing or analysis.

Here's an example of how you can flatten a nested dictionary into a matrix (2D list) in Python:

Example Nested Dictionary

Consider the following nested dictionary:

nested_dict = { "item1": {"key1": "value1", "key2": "value2"}, "item2": {"key1": "value3", "key2": "value4"}, # ... potentially more items }

Flattening to a Matrix

The idea is to convert this dictionary into a matrix where each row represents an item, and each column represents a key.

def flatten_nested_dict_to_matrix(nested_dict): # Extract keys for the matrix columns keys = list(next(iter(nested_dict.values())).keys()) # Initialize the matrix with headers matrix = [['item'] + keys] # Fill the matrix with data for item, sub_dict in nested_dict.items(): row = [item] + [sub_dict[key] for key in keys] matrix.append(row) return matrix # Flatten the nested dictionary matrix = flatten_nested_dict_to_matrix(nested_dict) # Display the resulting matrix for row in matrix: print(row)

Explanation

  • The function flatten_nested_dict_to_matrix takes a nested dictionary as input.
  • First, it extracts the keys from the first sub-dictionary to create column headers for the matrix.
  • The matrix is initialized with these headers, and the special column 'item' is added to store the keys of the outer dictionary.
  • Then, the function iterates through each item in the nested dictionary, extracting values and organizing them into rows of the matrix.
  • Finally, the matrix is returned and printed row by row.

This approach assumes that all sub-dictionaries have the same structure (same keys). If this is not the case, additional logic may be required to handle missing keys or varying structures.

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