Python: Retrieve result from inner dictionary - python-3.x

Question

I'm fairly new to python and I don't know how can I retrieve a value from a inner dictionary:
This is the value I have in my variable:
variable = {'hosts': 1, 'key':'abc', 'result': {'data':[{'licenses': 2, 'id':'john'},{'licenses': 1, 'id':'mike'}]}, 'version': 2}
What I want to do is assign a new variable the number of licenses 'mike' has, for example.
Sorry for such a newbie, and apparent simple question, but I'm only using python for a couple of days and need this functioning asap. I've search the oracle (google) and stackoverflow but haven't been able to find an answer...
PS: Using python3

Answer 1

Working through it and starting with
>>> from pprint import pprint
>>> pprint(variable)
{'hosts': 1,
'key': 'abc',
'result': {'data': [{'id': 'john', 'licenses': 2},
{'id': 'mike', 'licenses': 1}]},
'version': 2}
First, let's get to the result dict:
>>> result = variable['result']
>>> pprint(result)
{'data': [{'id': 'john', 'licenses': 2}, {'id': 'mike', 'licenses': 1}]}
and then to its data key:
>>> data = result['data']
>>> pprint(data)
[{'id': 'john', 'licenses': 2}, {'id': 'mike', 'licenses': 1}]
Now, we have to scan that for the 'mike' dict:
>>> for item in data:
... if item['id'] == 'mike':
... print item['licenses']
... break
...
1
You could shorten that to:
>>> for item in variable['result']['data']:
... if item['id'] == 'mike':
... print item['licenses']
... break
...
1
But much better would be to rearrange your data structure like:
variable = {
'hosts': 1,
'version': 2,
'licenses': {
'john': 2,
'mike': 1,
}
}
Then you could just do:
>>> variable['licenses']['mike']
1

Answer 2

You can use nested references as follows:
variable['result']['data'][1]['licenses'] += 1
variable['result'] returns:
{'data':[{'licenses': 2, 'id':'john'},{'licenses': 1, 'id':'mike'}]}
variable['result']['data'] returns:
[{'licenses': 2, 'id':'john'},{'licenses': 1, 'id':'mike'}]
variable['result']['data'][1] returns:
{'licenses': 1, 'id':'mike'}
variable['result']['data'][1]['licenses'] returns:
1
which we then increment using +=1