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Python Python Collections (2016, retired 2019) Dictionaries String Formatting with Dictionaries

Posted by behar
behar
10,799 Points

I dont understand this at all

Im totally lost on this challenge. I dont know how to do it, an im not even sure what he wants me to do. I dont understand what the ** does aside from build the **kwargs argument for the function.

Can someone give me the solution and a take at an explanation?

string_factory.py 
# Example:
# values = [{"name": "Michelangelo", "food": "PIZZA"}, {"name": "Garfield", "food": "lasagna"}]
# string_factory(values)
# ["Hi, I'm Michelangelo and I love to eat PIZZA!", "Hi, I'm Garfield and I love to eat lasagna!"]

template = "Hi, I'm {name} and I love to eat {food}!"
def string_factory(**kwargs):
    return ?????

2 Answers

Sneha Nagpaul
Sneha Nagpaul
10,124 Points
Sneha Nagpaul
Sneha Nagpaul
10,124 Points

You want to look at all ways you can unpack (consider elements separately) dictionaries. A starting point would be to consider the input to string_factory(). It is not a dictionary. It's a list. So, that is not where the unpacking is required.

The unpacking would come later when you pass the dictionary to format().

Hope that helps!

David Dzsotjan
David Dzsotjan
5,929 Points
David Dzsotjan
David Dzsotjan
5,929 Points

Hi! You have the template, containing the keywords in the curly braces (name and food). You want to construct a function that takes keyword arguments, and returns a string which is like the template, only the kwargs are substituted. So, a solution could be

def string_factory(**kwargs):
    return template.format(**kwargs )

Try this, and check what it gives if you call 

print(string_factory(name='Treetrunks', food='apple pie')