Unpacking

Hey Noah,

I was facing the same problem, managed to figure it out though eventually, by having a look at the teachers note under unpacking. See solution below, if you absolutely can't figure it our.

Let me break down the challenge for you: you need to first write a function called string_factory. This function will receive a list of dictionaries. These dictionaries will look like this: {"name" : "some_name", "food" : "some_food"}. You will need to loop through all of these and for each dictionary d you need to first insert the data (of name and food) into the template string using format(**d) then finally you add this to a list and when you've went through all the dictionaries, you return the list.

The trickiest part is actually this: template.format(**d), what ** does is unpack all the variables (food and name) and place this inside of the template string which has a placeholder for each value: "Hi, I'm {name} and I love to eat {food}!".

The complete code:

template = "Hi, I'm {name} and I love to eat {food}!"

def string_factory(list_of_dict):
    new_list = []
    for d in list_of_dict:
        new_list.append(template.format(**d))
    return new_list

Note that another instance in which the same notation: ** is used (which is confusing kind of) for packing. In packing the opposite concept applies, you are provided with key value pairs which you can all put into a dictionary. See the example below:

def packme(**kvs):
    return kvs;

print(packme(first_name="John", last_name="Smith"))

#this will print: {'first_name': 'John', 'last_name': 'Smith'}

It is recommended to write key-value pairs without any space in between i.e. first_name="John", not first_name = "John".

Hey Noah Harness

Here you should use a for loop to iterate over a dictionary, like so:

# initiate an empty list, to hold a list of dictionaries
my_list = []
for value in list_dict:
    my_list.append(#put here a template placeholder)

where 'list_dict' should be a List of Dictionaries or an argument of the function. also, don't forget to put the code in function as it was required in a task.

Let me know if you need some additional help. Cheers!

Here's a simpler way based on the video.

def favorite_food(dict):
    return "Hi, I'm {name} and I love to eat {food}!".format(**dict)

Just use the ** (asterisk) to unpack your dictionary into those template.