Flatten nested dictionaries, compressing keys

Question

Suppose you have a dictionary like:

{\'a\': 1,
 \'c\': {\'a\': 2,
       \'b\': {\'x\': 5,
             \'y\' : 10}},
 \'d\': [1, 2, 3]}

Ho

Answer 1

If you're using pandas there is a function hidden in pandas.io.json._normalize¹ called nested_to_record which does this exactly.

from pandas.io.json._normalize import nested_to_record    

flat = nested_to_record(my_dict, sep='_')

---

¹ In pandas versions 0.24.x and older use pandas.io.json.normalize (without the _)