Python list of dictionaries search

Question

Assume I have this:

[
{\"name\": \"Tom\", \"age\": 10},
{\"name\": \"Mark\", \"age\": 5},
{\"name\": \"Pam\", \"age\": 7}
]

and by searchin

Answer 1

Have you ever tried out the pandas package? It's perfect for this kind of search task and optimized too.

import pandas as pd

listOfDicts = [
{"name": "Tom", "age": 10},
{"name": "Mark", "age": 5},
{"name": "Pam", "age": 7}
]

# Create a data frame, keys are used as column headers.
# Dict items with the same key are entered into the same respective column.
df = pd.DataFrame(listOfDicts)

# The pandas dataframe allows you to pick out specific values like so:

df2 = df[ (df['name'] == 'Pam') & (df['age'] == 7) ]

# Alternate syntax, same thing

df2 = df[ (df.name == 'Pam') & (df.age == 7) ]

I've added a little bit of benchmarking below to illustrate pandas' faster runtimes on a larger scale i.e. 100k+ entries:

setup_large = 'dicts = [];\
[dicts.extend(({ "name": "Tom", "age": 10 },{ "name": "Mark", "age": 5 },\
{ "name": "Pam", "age": 7 },{ "name": "Dick", "age": 12 })) for _ in range(25000)];\
from operator import itemgetter;import pandas as pd;\
df = pd.DataFrame(dicts);'

setup_small = 'dicts = [];\
dicts.extend(({ "name": "Tom", "age": 10 },{ "name": "Mark", "age": 5 },\
{ "name": "Pam", "age": 7 },{ "name": "Dick", "age": 12 }));\
from operator import itemgetter;import pandas as pd;\
df = pd.DataFrame(dicts);'

method1 = '[item for item in dicts if item["name"] == "Pam"]'
method2 = 'df[df["name"] == "Pam"]'

import timeit
t = timeit.Timer(method1, setup_small)
print('Small Method LC: ' + str(t.timeit(100)))
t = timeit.Timer(method2, setup_small)
print('Small Method Pandas: ' + str(t.timeit(100)))

t = timeit.Timer(method1, setup_large)
print('Large Method LC: ' + str(t.timeit(100)))
t = timeit.Timer(method2, setup_large)
print('Large Method Pandas: ' + str(t.timeit(100)))

#Small Method LC: 0.000191926956177
#Small Method Pandas: 0.044392824173
#Large Method LC: 1.98827004433
#Large Method Pandas: 0.324505090714