How to completely traverse a complex dictionary of unknown depth?

Question

Importing from JSON can get very complex and nested structures. For example:

{u\'body\': [{u\'declarations\': [{u\'id\': {u\'name\': u\'i\',
            


        

Answer 1

If you only need to walk the dictionary, I'd suggest using a recursive walk function that takes a dictionary and then recursively walks through its elements. Something like this:

def walk(node):
    for key, item in node.items():
        if item is a collection:
            walk(item)
        else:
            It is a leaf, do your thing

If you also want to search for elements, or query several elements that pass certain criteria, have a look at the jsonpath module.