Monday, May 16, 2022

WTF: Python Dict two liner

 When working with DynamoDB in AWS, you know that the values you put in there are not your usual JSON. Instead of you key/value pair, your rather have key/type/value. Something like this:

{
    'key': {
        'type': 'value'
    }
}

Of course, you can let your API build this mess for you. Or you can do it yourself, as I found in our code base. Except it had this little gem in it. For creating a map, you have to apply this key/type/value pattern to all values. And then you have to insert the map using the 'M' type. The code ended with these two lines:

data = dict({})
data['M'] = my_map

First, dict({}) is like creating en empty dict from an empty dict. You either use dict() or {}, but not both. But since you can create your dict inline, I'd rather use this one-liner:

data = {'M': my_map}

Does it look simpler only to me?

No comments:

Post a Comment