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Python Python Collections (Retired) Dictionaries String Formatting with Dictionaries

Nathan McElwain
Nathan McElwain
4,575 Points
Posted by Nathan McElwain
Nathan McElwain
4,575 Points

How do I get this to work?

I've worked on this a bunch of different ways, but I just can't quite figure out how to get the right outcome,

strings.py 
dicts = [
    {'name': 'Michelangelo',
     'food': 'PIZZA'},
    {'name': 'Garfield',
     'food': 'lasanga'},
    {'name': 'Walter',
     'food': 'pancakes'},
    {'name': 'Galactus',
     'food': 'worlds'}
]

string = "Hi, I'm {name} and I love to eat {food}!"
def string_factory(dicts, string):
  newList = []
  newDict = dicts.pop()
  a = string.format(**newDict)
  newList.append(a)
  return newList

3 Answers

Chris Freeman
MOD
Chris Freeman
Treehouse Moderator 68,441 Points
Chris Freeman
Chris Freeman
Treehouse Moderator 68,441 Points

You need to add a loop to iterate over the dict_list. Something like:

def string_factory(orders, format_string):
    formatted = []

    for order in orders:
         formatted.append(format_string.format(**order))

    return formatted
Vittorio Somaschini
Vittorio Somaschini
33,371 Points
Vittorio Somaschini
Vittorio Somaschini
33,371 Points

Hello Nathan.

I am struggling understanding what you wanted to do with your code. Especially the pop method line as I can't really see the need for it.

I have moved back to the code challenge and solved it this way:

I have typed the same code as yours till newList= [], but if I got it right in python we should not use camelCase but something like string_list = [] as per conventions (I think).

After that I have made a loop to go through all the dictionaries in dicts, and just appended the formatted string each time to the string_list we have just initialized. I see you got this part as you wrote a very similar line of code : string.format(**newDict)

After that I have returned the string_list: make sure indentation is good, because the return statement in this case has to have same indentation as the for in loop.

I am going to paste my code below, it is not a very good practice I think as you may want to try and solve it by yourself now before having a look at it, but since I think it is important to understand the solution I came up with, I am going to paste it anyway, so

DO NOT SCROLL DOWN IF YOU WANT TO TRY AGAIN BY YOURSELF!

def string_factory(dicts, string):
  string_list = []
  for dictionary in dicts:
      string_list.append(string.format(**dictionary))
  return string_list

I hope this helped.

Let me know if any other questions.

Vittorio

Nathan McElwain
Nathan McElwain
4,575 Points
Nathan McElwain
Nathan McElwain
4,575 Points

Thank you both. I was having a hard time figuring out how to iterate through the list.