how to extract a text file into a dictionary

Question

i am wondering how you would extract a text into dictionary in python. the text file is formatted as such(see below) and extract in way so that object earth for example is t

Answer 1

Using a modification of one of the above you would get something like the following:

def read_next_object(file):    
        obj = {}               
        for line in file:      
                if not line.strip(): continue
                line = line.strip()                        
                key, val = line.split(": ")                
                if key in obj and key == "Object": 
                        yield obj                       
                        obj = {}                              
                obj[key] = val

        yield obj              
planets = {}                   
with open( "test.txt", 'r') as f:
        for obj in read_next_object(f): 
                planets[obj["Object"]] = obj    

print planets                  

Fix the case for the RootObject and I believe this is the final dictionary that you are looking for from the example data that you have posted. It is a dictionary of planets where each planet is a dictionary of it's information.

print planets["Sun"]["Radius"]

Should print the value 20890260

The output from the above looks like the following:

{   'Earth': {   'Object': 'Earth',
             'Orbital Radius': '77098290',
             'Period': '365.256363004',
             'Radius': '6371000.0',
             'Satellites': 'Moon'},
     'Moon': {   'Object': 'Moon',
            'Orbital Radius': '18128500',
            'Period': '27.321582',
            'Radius': '1737000.10'},
     'Sun': {   'Object': 'Sun',
           'Orbital Radius': '0',
           'Radius': '20890260',
           'RootObject': 'Sun',
           'Satellites': 'Mercury,Venus,Earth,Mars,Jupiter,Saturn,Uranus,Neptune,Ceres,Pluto,Haumea,Makemake,Eris'}}