[Solved] take elements of dictionary to create another dictionary

Question

You could do this:

a = {'vladimirputin': {'milk': 2.87, 'parsley': 1.33, 'bread': 0.66}, 'barakobama':{'parsley': 0.76, 'sugar': 1.98, 'crisps': 1.09, 'potatoes': 2.67, 'cereal': 9.21}}
b = {}

for prez in a:
    for food in a[prez]:
        if food not in b:
            b[food] = {prez: a[prez][food]}
        else:
            b[food][prez] = a[prez][food]

This gives:

{'bread': {'vladimirputin': 0.66},
 'cereal': {'barakobama': 9.21},
 'crisps': {'barakobama': 1.09},
 'milk': {'vladimirputin': 2.87},
 'parsley': {'barakobama': 0.76, 'vladimirputin': 1.33},
 'potatoes': {'barakobama': 2.67},
 'sugar': {'barakobama': 1.98}}

Explanation:

Your input dictionary a has president names as keys. The output dictionary needs food items as keys.

The statement if food not in b checks if a particular food item is already a key in the output dictionary. If it is not, it will create a new dictionary as the value. Like in the case of 'sugar': {'barakobama': 1.98}

If the key is already present in the output dictionary, it gets it and adds another key value pair to it
like in the case of 'parsley': {'barakobama': 0.76, 'vladimirputin': 1.33}

You can find out how to code progresses by adding print statements in the code and checking the value of the output dictionary b at each step.

Accepted Answer