How to access data in dictionary within list in python - python-3.x

Question

I am currently working on a python program to query public github API url to get github user email address. The response from the python object is a huge list with a lot of dictionaries.
My code so far
import requests
import json
# username = ''
username = 'FamousBern'
base_url = 'https://api.github.com/users/{}/events/public'
url = base_url.format(username)
try:
res = requests.get(url)
r = json.loads(res.text)
# print(r) # List slicing
print(type(r)) # List that has alot dictionaries
for i in r:
if 'payload' in i:
print(i['payload'][6])
# matches = []
# for match in r:
# if 'author' in match:
# matches.append(match)
# print(matches)
# print(r[18:])
except Exception as e:
print(e)
# data = res.json()
# print(data)
# print(type(data))
# email = data['author']
# print(email)
By manually accessing this url in chrome browser i get the following
[
{
"id": "15069094667",
"type": "PushEvent",
"actor": {
"id": 32365949,
"login": "FamousBern",
"display_login": "FamousBern",
"gravatar_id": "",
"url": "https://api.github.com/users/FamousBern",
"avatar_url": "https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/32365949?"
},
"repo": {
"id": 332684394,
"name": "FamousBern/FamousBern",
"url": "https://api.github.com/repos/FamousBern/FamousBern"
},
"payload": {
"push_id": 6475329882,
"size": 1,
"distinct_size": 1,
"ref": "refs/heads/main",
"head": "f9c165226201c19fd6a6acd34f4ecb7a151f74b3",
"before": "8b1a9ac283ba41391fbf1168937e70c2c8590a79",
"commits": [
{
"sha": "f9c165226201c19fd6a6acd34f4ecb7a151f74b3",
"author": {
"email": "bernardberbell#gmail.com",
"name": "FamousBern"
},
"message": "Changed input functionality",
"distinct": true,
"url": "https://api.github.com/repos/FamousBern/FamousBern/commits/f9c165226201c19fd6a6acd34f4ecb7a151f74b3"
}
]
},
The json object is huge as well, i just sliced it. I am interested to get the email address in the author dictionary.

Answer 1

You're attempting to index into a dict() with i['payload'][6] which will raise an error.
My personal preferred way of checking for key membership in nested dicts is using the get method with a default of an empty dict.
import requests
import json
username = 'FamousBern'
base_url = 'https://api.github.com/users/{}/events/public'
url = base_url.format(username)
res = requests.get(url)
r = json.loads(res.text)
# for each dict in the list
for event in r:
# using .get() means you can chain .get()s for nested dicts
# and they won't fail even if the key doesn't exist
commits = event.get('payload', dict()).get('commits', list())
# also using .get() with an empty list default means
# you can always iterate over commits
for commit in commits:
# email = commit.get('author', dict()).get('email', None)
# is also an option if you're not sure if those keys will exist
email = commit['author']['email']
print(email)