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

Christian Glaß
Christian Glaß
5,650 Points

No specific question, I just don't get this code challenge...

I tried to solve it in workspaces but no success, hope you can help me. :)

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(something):

2 Answers

Ryan Cross
Ryan Cross
5,742 Points

I think you should see these two parts of the language so you have them as tools in your toolbox. When you go on to do your own stuff you never know when iy will come in handy.

one interesting item is the **....for unpacking dictionaries in a function calls argument or packing kw pairs into a dictionary in function def

A second one is the specified placeholder format...like "This could help{name}later".format()

Viraj Deshaval
Viraj Deshaval
4,874 Points

To understand this code challenge in a precise way, first just loop through each value in your values list.

values = [{"name": "Michelangelo", "food": "PIZZA"}, {"name": "Garfield", "food": "lasagna"}]

dict_values = []

for value in values:
    dict_values.append(value)

#Output will be as below:
[{'name': 'Michelangelo', 'food': 'PIZZA'}, {'name': 'Garfield', 'food': 'lasagna'}]

Why we have used list instead of dictionary is because we are passing values to function in list form.

This gives you a hint that now by looping through each value and appending to your new list gives us a list with dictionaries. Now, only part left is formatting our template and for this we can use unpacking.

values_list = []
for value in values:
        values_list.append(template.format(**value))
return values_list

Here we are using unpacking which means for each dictionary take its key and value and send it to the template as keyword arguments.

Hope this helps.