Python beginner has some problems with the spotipy search function - python-3.x

Question

i am trying to set up a basic tool which is supposed to do following:
1. Search for Musicans in Spotify
2. Print results in a way i can use them for stuff (e.g. show output in a window or something like that)
Unfortunatly i cant wrap my head around following Problem:
import spotipy
import sys
from spotipy.oauth2 import SpotifyClientCredentials
client_credentials_manager = SpotifyClientCredentials(client_id='',
client_secret='')
spotify = spotipy.Spotify(client_credentials_manager=client_credentials_manager)
result = spotify.search(q='Korn', limit=5)
for i, t in enumerate(result['tracks']['items']): # way i dont understand
print (' ', i, t['name'])
print(result) #way i would like to do it
The code can print a list in this enumerate fashion but isnt capable of printing it normally. The thing is I dont understand the way enumerate does this.
Can someone please give me some insights how the search function and enumerate work and maybe show me an elegant solution so i can print this list?

Answer 1

I don't know about the spotipy module so I'll have to assume a few things, based on what you said works or doesn't work.
So... your variable named 'result' seems to behave like a dictionary. You can index it with keys ('tracks', 'items'), (as shown there: result['tracks']['items']), and this seems to give you back stuff that behaves like a list containing stuff that behaves like a dictionary, that among other things contains the key 'name' (as shown there: t['name']).
To illustrate how enumerate works, here's an example:
>>> hello = ['h', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o']
>>> print(list(enumerate(hello)))
[(0, 'h'), (1, 'e'), (2, 'l'), (3, 'l'), (4, 'o')]
It essentially gives you back tuples of each index in the list, and what is at that index.
Also note that Python has a principle called 'duck-typing'. It says that “If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck.”. That's why I don't worry to much about what type an object is, what I care about is what it behaves like.
Now, when you say something like:
for index, element in enumerate(elements):
You're using what's called unpacking. It lets you separate the tuples that enumerate gives you into two variables.
Then if we wanted to simply do print(result), the class that let you instantiate result would need to implement either the __repr__ or __str__ methods. In it, you would have all the logic that's contained in your for loop, grabbing the data at the appropriate keys in the dictionary-like object and returning a correctly formatted string. But it looks like this class comes from an external library, so I'm not sure it would be a good idea to implement these yourself (I don't have experience doing that yet).
Hope that my explanations were at least a little bit helpful.