Nested dictionary creation with setdefault

Question

Is there a better way of creating a nested dictionary than what I'm doing below? The result for the setdefault is because I don't know whether that particular key exists yet or not.

def record_execution_log_action(
        execution_log, region, service, resource, resource_id, resource_action
    ):
        execution_log["AWS"].setdefault(region, {}).setdefault(service, {}).setdefault(
            resource, []
        ).append(
            {
                "id": resource_id,
                "action": resource_action,
                "timestamp": datetime.datetime.now().strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"),
            }
        )

You can used a defaultdict from collections module instead, it automatically creates the default( this can be a list) if the key is not found. — theProgrammer
– theProgrammer, Commented Dec 8, 2020 at 0:25
I've created about defaultdict but I don't get how to use it for my nested use case properly. Could you give an example? — mlevit
– mlevit, Commented Dec 8, 2020 at 0:45

RootTwo · Accepted Answer · 2020-12-08 04:06:41Z

Use a defaultdict like so:

from collections import defaultdict

resource_dict = lambda: defaultdict(list)
service_dict = lambda: defaultdict(resource_dict)
region_dict = lambda: defaultdict(service_dict)
execution_log = defaultdict(region_dict)

execution_log['AWS']['region']['service']['resource'].append({
                "id": 'resource_id',
                "action": 'resource_action',
                "timestamp": "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S",
            })

execution_log

output:

defaultdict(<function __main__.<lambda>()>,
            {'AWS': defaultdict(<function __main__.<lambda>()>,
                         {'region': defaultdict(<function __main__.<lambda>()>,
                                      {'service': defaultdict(list,
                                                   {'resource': [{'id': 'resource_id',
                                                      'action': 'resource_action',
                                                      'timestamp': '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'}]})})})})

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