Iterating Dictionaries

🟨🐍 Technique Card: Iterating Dictionaries (practical)

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Basic Iteration (looping)

We can iterate over key:value pairs in Python dictionaries using:

my_dict = {"bobo": "blue", "lisa": "silver", "dianne": "green"}
for key in my_dict:
    print(f"{key} loves {my_dict[key]}")

🧠 What About .items()

The .items() method in Python lets you work with both the key and the value of a dictionary at the same time. It gives you a dict_items object — think of it like a bag of key-value pairs!

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🧪 How It Works

my_dict = {"apple": 1, "banana": 2}

# Looping with .items()
for key, value in my_dict.items():
    print(key, value)

👆 This is a quick and clear way to get both the name (key) and the number (value).

Note

We often just use k, v instead of key, value

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🔍 What You Might See

print(my_dict.items())
# Output: dict_items([('apple', 1), ('banana', 2)])

It might look strange, but it’s just a collection of pairs!

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🛠️ You Can Also

✅ Turn It Into a List

list_of_pairs = list(my_dict.items())
print(list_of_pairs)
# [('apple', 1), ('banana', 2)]

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🎯 Challenges to Try

1. Create a dictionary of animals and how many of each you saw.
2. Use .items() to print a sentence like: "I saw 3 foxes."
3. Convert your dictionary to a list of key-value pairs.

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🔗 Linked Cards

• 🐍 Technique Card: Dictionaries in Python (practical)

📹 Video Link

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