In this article by Jessica Ingrassellino, the author of Python Projects for Kids, you will learn that Python has very efficient ways of storing data, which is one reason why it is popular among many companies that make web applications. You will learn about the two most important ways to store and retrieve data in Python—lists and dictionaries.
(For more resources related to this topic, see here.)
Lists
Lists have many different uses when coding and many different operations can be performed on lists, thanks to Python. In this article, you will only learn some of the many uses of lists.
However, if you wish to learn more about lists, the Python documentation is very detailed and available at https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/datastructures.html?highlight=lists#more-on-lists.
First, it is important to note that a list is made by assigning it a name and putting the items in the list inside of square brackets []. In your Python shell, type the three lists, one on each line:
fruit = ['apple', 'banana', 'kiwi', 'dragonfruit']
years = [2012, 2013, 2014, 2015]
students_in_class = [30, 22, 28, 33]
The lists that you just typed have a particular kind of data inside. However, one good feature of lists is that they can mix up data types within the same list. For example, I have made this list that combines strings and integers:
computer_class = ['Cynthia', 78, 42, 'Raj', 98, 24, 35, 'Kadeem', 'Rachel']Now that we have made the lists, we can get the contents of the list in many ways. In fact, once you create a list, the computer remembers the order of the list, and the order stays constant until it is changed purposefully. The easiest way for us to see that the order of lists is maintained is to run tests on the lists that we have already made.
The first item of a Python list is always counted as 0 (zero). So, for our first test, let’s see if asking for the 0 item actually gives us the first item. Using our fruit list, we will type the name of the list inside of the print statement, and then add square brackets [] with the number 0:
print(fruit[0])Your output will be apple, since apple is the first fruit in the list that we created earlier.
So, we have evidence that counting in Python does start with 0. Now, we can try to print the fourth item in the fruit list. You will notice that we are entering 3 in our print command. This is because the first item started at 0. Type the following code into your Python shell:
print(fruit[3])What is your outcome? Did you expect dragonfruit to be the answer? If so, good, you are learning to count items in lists. If not, remember that the first item in a list is the 0 item. With practice, you will become better at counting items in Python lists.
For extra practice, work with the other lists that we made earlier, and try printing different items from the list by changing the number in the following line of code:
print(list_name[item_number])Where the code says list_name, write the name of the list that you want to use. Where the code says item_number, write the number of the item that you want to print. Remember that lists begin counting at 0.
Changing the list – adding and removing information
Even though lists have order, lists can be changed. Items can be added to a list, removed from a list, or changed in a list. Again, there are many ways to interact with lists. We will only discuss a few here, but you can always read the Python documentation for more information.
To add an item to our fruit list, for example, we can use a method called list.append(). To use this method, type the name of the list, a dot, the method name append, and then parenthesis with the item that you would like to add contained inside. If the item is a string, remember to use single quotes. Type the following code to add an orange to the list of fruits that we have made:
fruit.append('orange')Then, print the list of fruit to see that orange has been added to the list:
print(fruit)
Now, let’s say that we no longer wish for the dragonfruit to appear on our list. We will use a method called list.remove(). To do this, we will type the name of our list, a dot, the method name called remove, and the name of the item that we wish to remove:
fruit.remove('dragonfruit')Then, we will print the list to see that the dragonfruit has been removed:
print(fruit)
If you have more than one of the same item in the list, list.remove() will only remove the first instance of that item. The other items with the same name need to be removed separately.
Loops and lists
Lists and for loops work very well together. With lists, we can do something called iteration. By itself, the word iteration means to repeat a procedure over and over again. We know that the for loops repeat things for a limited and specific number of times.
In this sample, we have three colors in our list. Make this list in your Python terminal:
colors = ['green', 'yellow', 'red']Using our list, we may decide that for each color in the list, we want to print the statement called I see and add each color in our list. Using the for loop with the list, we can type the print statement one time and get three statements in return. Type the following for loop into your Python shell:
for color in colors:
print('I see ' + str(color) + '.')Once you are done typing the print line and pressing Enter twice, your for loop will start running, and you should see the following statements printed out in your Python shell:
As you can imagine, lists and the for loops are very powerful when used together. Instead of having to type the line three times with three different pieces of code, we only had to type two lines of code. We used the str() method to make sure that the sentence that we printed combined with the list items.
Our for loop is helpful because those two lines of code would work if there were 20 colors in our list.
Dictionaries
Dictionaries are another way to organize data. At first glance, a dictionary may look just like a list. However, dictionaries have different jobs, rules, and syntax.
Dictionaries have names and use curly braces to store information. For example, if we wanted to make a dictionary called sports, we would then put the dictionary entries inside of curly braces. Here is a simple example:
numbers = {'one': 1, 'two': 2, 'three': 3}Key/value pairs in dictionaries
A dictionary stores information with things called keys and values. In a dictionary of items, for example, we may have keys that tell us the names of each item and values that tell us how many of each item we have in our inventory. Once we store these items in our dictionary, we can add or remove new items (keys), add new amounts (values), or change the amounts of existing items.
Here is an example of a dictionary that could hold some information for a game. Let’s suppose that the hero in our game has some items needed to survive. Here is a dictionary of our hero’s items:
items = {'arrows' : 200, 'rocks' : 25, 'food' : 15, 'lives' : 2}Unlike lists, a dictionary uses keys and values to find information. So, this dictionary has the keys called arrows, rocks, food, and lives. Each of the numbers tells us the amount of items that our hero has. Dictionaries have different characteristics than lists do. So, we can look up certain items in our dictionary using the print function:
print(items['arrows'])The result of this print command will print 200, as this is the number of arrows our hero has in his inventory:
Changing the dictionary – adding and removing information
Python offers us ways not only to make a dictionary but to also add and remove things from our dictionaries.
For example, let’s say that in our game, we allow the player to discover a fireball later in the game. To add the item to the dictionary, we will use what is called the subscript method to add a new key and a new value to our dictionary. This means that we will use the name of the dictionary and square brackets to write the name of the item that we wish to add, and finally, we will set the value to how many items we want to put into our dictionary:
items['fireball'] = 10If we print the entire dictionary of items, you will see that fireball has been added:
print(items)
items = {'arrows' : 200, 'rocks' : 25, 'food' : 15, 'lives' : 2, 'fireball' : 10}
We can also change the number of items in our dictionary using the dict.update() method. This method uses the name of the dictionary and the word update. Then, in parentheses (), we use curly braces {} to type the name of the item that we wish to update—a colon (:), and the new number of items we want in the dictionary. Try this in your Python shell:
items.update({'rocks':10})
print(items)
You will notice that if you have done print(items), then you will now have 10 rocks instead of 25. We have successfully updated our number of items.
To remove something from a dictionary, one must reference the key or the name of the item and delete the item. By doing so, the value that goes with the item will also be removed. In Python, this means using del along with the name of the dictionary and the name of the item you wish to remove.
Using the items list as our example, let’s remove lives, and then use a print statement to test and see if the lives key was removed:
del items['lives']
print(items)The items list will now look as follows:
With dictionaries, information is stored and retrieved differently than with lists, but we can still perform the same operation of adding and removing information as well as making changes to information.
Summary
Lists and dictionaries are two different ways to store and retrieve information in Python. Although, the sample data that we saw in this article was small, Python can handle large sets of data and process them at high speeds. Learning to use lists and dictionaries will allow you to solve complicated programming problems in many realms, including gaming, web app development, and data analysis.
Resources for Article:
Further resources on this subject:
- Exception Handling in MySQL for Python [article]
- Configuring and securing PYTHON LDAP Applications Part 1 [article]
- Web scraping with Python (Part 2) [article]
