4 different ways to get dictionary values as a list in Python

Introduction #

In this article we will be talking about 4 different ways to get dictionary values as list in python using simple examples.

So, let’s dive into the solutions

Method 1: Using list() && dictionary.values() functions #

We can use a dictionary.values() function to get the values from the dictionary and then apply list() method to store all the values in a list.

The default python dictionary.values() returns a view of dictionary values, so we have to use list() method to convert them into a list.

For example:-

//Create Dictionary
dict_new = {'1': 'python', '2': 'shiksha', 
         '3': 'machine', '4': 'learning'} 

print("View of Dictionary values")
print(dict_new.values())

print("Dictionary values in List")
print(list(dict_new.values()))

Output:

View of Dictionary values
dict_values(['python', 'shiksha', 'machine', 'learning'])
Dictionary values in List
['python', 'shiksha', 'machine', 'learning']

Method 2: Using asterisk(*) and dictionary.values() function #

Instead of using list() method, we can use * operator to convert dictionary view values into a list.

For example:-

# create a dictionary 
dict_new = {'1': 'python', '2': 'shiksha', 
         '3': 'machine', '4': 'learning'} 

# get list of values 
print([*dict_new.values()])

Output:

['python', 'shiksha', 'machine', 'learning']

Method 3: Using a for loop to get values #

Instead of using built in methods to get the dictionary values as a list, we can use classic for loop.

In this method we can take a for loop to iterate over the dictionary elements one by one and append all the values to a empty list one by one.

For example:-

# create a dictionary 
dict_new = {'1': 'python', '2': 'shiksha', 
        '3': 'machine', '4': 'learning'} 

# get list of values 
value = [] 
For i in dict_new: 
   value.append(dict_new[i]) 
Print(value) 

Output:

[‘python’,’shiksha’,’machine’,’learning’] 

Method 4: Using list comprehension #

It is similar to the above method.

The only difference is that here we can perform the operations of for loop in one single line.

It makes the code look cleaner. For example:-

# create a dictionary 
dict_new = {'1': 'python', '2': 'shiksha', 
        '3': 'machine', '4': 'learning'} 
        
# get list of values 
print([dict_new[i] for i in dict_new]) 

Output:

[‘python’,’shiksha’,’machine’,’learning’] 

We have learnt four different ways of getting a list of values from python dictionary.

But which method is effective?

Well , for smaller dictionaries (*) operator is faster, but for large dictionaries list() method works slightly better.

Conclusion #

In this article, we briefly discussed about the various methods that can be used to get a list of dictionary values in python and we also discussed about the most effective method for achieving this result.

Tribhuvan Mishra is an undergrad student pursuing Bachelors in Technology.

https://python.shiksha/authors/tribhuvan/