I am guessing, that the defaultdict is not what you want to use.
Default values should be declared in the second argument of the get
method.
problem = [{'lastInspection': {'date': '2018-01-03'}, 'contacts': []}]
default_inspection = { 'date': '2018-01-03' }
for p in problem:
# default_inspection is returned, when 'lastInspection' is not present in the json
inspection = p.get("lastInspection", default_inspection)
print(inspection)
# now you access date, as you are sure, that it is present
print(inspection['date'])
1
solved defaultdict key default value issues