How to get keys from nested dictionary of arbitrary length in Python - python-3.x

Question

I have a dictionary object in python. Let's call it as dict. This object could contain another dictionary which may in turn contain another dictionary and so on.
dict = { 'k': v, 'k1': v1, 'dict2':{'k3': v3, 'k4':v4} , 'dict3':{'k5':v5, dict4:{'k6':v6}}}
This is just an example. Length of outermost dictionary could be anything. I want to extract keys from such dictionary object in following two ways :
get list of only keys.
[k,k1,k2,k3,k4,k5,k6]
get list of keys and its parent associated dictionary so something like this :
outer_dict_keys = [k ,dict2, dict3]
dict2_keys = [k3,k4]
dict3_keys = [k5, dict4]
dict4_keys = [k6]
Outermost dictionary dict length is always changing so I can not hard code anything.
What is best way to achieve above result ?

Answer 1

Use a mix of iteration and tail recursion. After quoting undefined names, making spacing uniform, and removing 'k2' from the first result, I came up with the code below. (Written and tested for 3.4, it should run on any 3.x and might on 2.7.) A key thing to remember is that the iteration order of dicts is essentially random, and varies with each run. Recursion as done here visit sub-dicts in depth-first rather than breadth-first order. For dict0, both are the same, But if dict4 were nested in dict2 rather than dict3, they would not be.
dict0 = {'k0': 0, 'k1': 1, 'dict2':{'k3': 3, 'k4': 4},
'dict3':{'k5': 5, 'dict4':{'k6': 6}}}
def keys(dic, klist=[]):
subdics = []
for key in sorted(dic):
val = dic[key]
if isinstance(val, dict):
subdics.append(val)
else:
klist.append(key)
for subdict in subdics:
keys(subdict, klist)
return klist
result = keys(dict0)
print(result, '\n', result == ['k0','k1','k3','k4','k5','k6'])
def keylines(dic, name='outer_dict', lines=[]):
vals = []
subdics = []
for key in sorted(dic):
val = dic[key]
if isinstance(val, dict):
subdics.append((key,val))
else:
vals.append(key)
vals.extend(pair[0] for pair in subdics)
lines.append('{}_keys = {}'.format(name, vals))
for subdict in subdics:
keylines(subdict[1], subdict[0], lines)
return lines
result = keylines(dict0)
for line in result:
print(line,)
print()
expect = [
"outer_dict_keys = ['k0', 'k1', 'dict2', 'dict3']",
"dict2_keys = ['k3', 'k4']",
"dict3_keys = ['k5', 'dict4']",
"dict4_keys = ['k6']"]
for actual, want in zip(result, expect):
if actual != want:
print(want)
for i, (c1, c2) in enumerate(zip(actual, want)):
if c1 != c2:
print(i, c1, c2)