Shortest way to get first item of `OrderedDict` in Python 3

Question

What\'s the shortest way to get first item of OrderedDict in Python 3?

My best:

list(ordered_dict.items())[0]

Quite lo

Answer 1

Code that's readable, leaves the OrderedDict unchanged and doesn't needlessly generate a potentially large list just to get the first item:

for item in ordered_dict.items():
    return item

If ordered_dict is empty, None would be returned implicitly.

An alternate version for use inside a stretch of code:

for first in ordered_dict.items():
    break  # Leave the name 'first' bound to the first item
else:
    raise IndexError("Empty ordered dict")

The Python 2.x code corresponding to the first example above would need to use iteritems() instead:

for item in ordered_dict.iteritems():
    return item