How can I combine dictionaries with the same keys?

Question

I have a list of dictionaries like so:

dicts = [
    {'key_a': valuex1,
     'key_b': valuex2,
     'key_c': valuex3},

    {'key_a': valuey1,
     'key_b': valuey2,
     'key_c': valuey3},

    {'key_a': valuez1,
     'key_b': valuez2,
     'key_c': valuez3}
]

I would like to take these and construct a big dictionary like so:

big_dict = {
    'key_a': [valuex1, valuey1, valuez1],
    'key_b': [valuex2, valuey2, valuez2],
    'key_c': [valuex3, valuey3, valuez3]
}

Is there any elegant "zip"-like way for me to do this?

All the keys are always going to be identical.

Answer 1

You can use collections.defaultdict. The benefit of this solution is it does not require keys to be consistent across dictionaries, and it still maintains the minimum O(n) time complexity.

from collections import defaultdict

dict_list = [{'key_a': 'valuex1', 'key_b': 'valuex2', 'key_c': 'valuex3'},
             {'key_a': 'valuey1', 'key_b': 'valuey2', 'key_c': 'valuey3'},
             {'key_a': 'valuez1', 'key_b': 'valuez2', 'key_c': 'valuez3'}]            

d = defaultdict(list)
for myd in dict_list:
    for k, v in myd.items():
        d[k].append(v)

Result:

print(d)

defaultdict(list,
            {'key_a': ['valuex1', 'valuey1', 'valuez1'],
             'key_b': ['valuex2', 'valuey2', 'valuez2'],
             'key_c': ['valuex3', 'valuey3', 'valuez3']})

Answer 2

big_dict = {}
for k in dicts[0]:
    big_dict[k] = [d[k] for d in dicts]

Or, with a dict comprehension:

{k: [d[k] for d in dicts] for k in dicts[0]}