Python - List of unique dictionaries

Question

Let s say I got a list of dictionaries           id   1   name    john    age   34         id   1   name    john    age   34         id   2   name    hanna    age   30       and I need to obtain a list of unique dictionaries  removing the duplicates            id   1   name    john    age   34         id   2   name    hanna    age   30       Can anyone help me with the most efficient way to achieve this in Python

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a       id  1  name   john    age  34     id  1  name   john    age  34     id  2  name   hanna    age  30      b    x  id   x for x in a  values    print b    outputs         age   34   id   1   name    john      age   30   id   2   name    hanna

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This is the solution I found   usedID       x       id  1  name   john    age  34     id  1  name   john    age  34     id  2  name   hanna    age  30      for each in x      if each  id   in usedID          x remove each      else          usedID append each  id     print x   Basically you check if the ID is present in the list  if it is  delete the dictionary  if not  append the ID to the list

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The usual way to find just the common elements in a set is to use Python s set class   Just add all the elements to the set  then convert the set to a list  and bam the duplicates are gone   The problem  of course  is that a set   can only contain hashable entries  and a dict is not hashable   If I had this problem  my solution would be to convert each dict into a string that represents the dict  then add all the strings to a set   then read out the string values as a list   and convert back to dict   A good representation of a dict in string form is JSON format   And Python has a built-in module for JSON  called json of course    The remaining problem is that the elements in a dict are not ordered  and when Python converts the dict to a JSON string  you might get two JSON strings that represent equivalent dictionaries but are not identical strings   The easy solution is to pass the argument sort keys True when you call json dumps      EDIT  This solution was assuming that a given dict could have any part different   If we can assume that every dict with the same  id  value will match every other dict with the same  id  value  then this is overkill   gnibbler s solution would be faster and easier   EDIT  Now there is a comment from Andr   Lima explicitly saying that if the ID is a duplicate  it s safe to assume that the whole dict is a duplicate   So this answer is overkill and I recommend  gnibbler s answer

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So make a temporary dict with the key being the id  This filters out the duplicates  The values   of the dict will be the list  In Python2 7   gt  gt  gt  L         id  1  name   john    age  34         id  1  name   john    age  34         id  2  name   hanna    age  30          gt  gt  gt   v  id   v for v in L  values      age   34   id   1   name    john      age   30   id   2   name    hanna      In Python3   gt  gt  gt  L         id  1  name   john    age  34         id  1  name   john    age  34         id  2  name   hanna    age  30           gt  gt  gt  list  v  id   v for v in L  values       age   34   id   1   name    john      age   30   id   2   name    hanna      In Python2 5 2 6   gt  gt  gt  L         id  1  name   john    age  34         id  1  name   john    age  34         id  2  name   hanna    age  30           gt  gt  gt  dict  v  id   v  for v in L  values      age   34   id   1   name    john      age   30   id   2   name    hanna

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We can do with pandas   import pandas as pd yourdict pd DataFrame L  drop duplicates   to dict  r   Out 293      age   34   id   1   name    john      age   30   id   2   name    hanna      Notice slightly different from the accept answer    drop duplicates will check all column in pandas   if all same then the row will be dropped     For example     If we change the 2nd dict name from john to peter  L         id   1   name    john    age   34         id   1   name    peter    age   34         id   2   name    hanna    age   30     pd DataFrame L  drop duplicates   to dict  r   Out 295       age   34   id   1   name    john       age   34   id   1   name    peter     here will still keeping the dict in the out put     age   30   id   2   name    hanna

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There are a lot of answers here  so let me add another   import json from typing import List  def dedup dicts items  List dict        dedupped     json loads i  for i in set json dumps item  sort keys True  for item in items       return dedupped  items           id   1   name    john    age   34         id   1   name    john    age   34         id   2   name    hanna    age   30     dedup dicts items

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You can use numpy library  works for Python2 x only       import numpy as np      list of unique dicts list np unique np array list of dicts      To get it worked with Python 3 x  and recent versions of numpy   you need   to convert array of dicts to numpy array of strings  e g    list of unique dicts list np unique np array list of dicts  astype str

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Pretty straightforward option   L           id  1  name   john    age  34         id  1  name   john    age  34         id  2  name   hanna    age  30           D   dict   for l in L  D l  id      l output   list D values    print output

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I have summarized my favorites to try out   https   repl it  SmaMa Python-List-of-unique-dictionaries    ----------------------------------------------   Setup   ----------------------------------------------  myList         id   1    lala    value 1        id    2    lala    value 2         id    2    lala    value 2         id    3    lala    value 3     print  myList    myList     -----------------------------------------------   Option 1 if objects has an unique identifier   -----------------------------------------------  myUniqueList   list  myObject  id   myObject for myObject in myList  values    print  myUniqueList    myUniqueList     -----------------------------------------------   Option 2 if uniquely identified by whole object   -----------------------------------------------  myUniqueSet    dict s  for s in set frozenset myObject items    for myObject in myList   print  myUniqueSet    myUniqueSet     -----------------------------------------------   Option 3 for hashable objects  not dicts    -----------------------------------------------  myHashableObjects   list set   1    2    2    3     print  myHashAbleList    myHashableObjects

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I don t know if you only want the id of your dicts in the list to be unique  but if the goal is to have a set of dict where the unicity is on all keys  values   you should use tuples key like this in your comprehension     gt  gt  gt  L             id  1  name   john    age  34            id  1  name   john    age  34             id  2  name   hanna    age  30            id  2  name   hanna    age  50            gt  gt  gt  len L  4  gt  gt  gt  L list   v  id    v  age    v  name    v for v in L  values     gt  gt  gt L    id   1   name    john    age   34     id   2   name    hanna    age   30     id   2   name    hanna    age   50    gt  gt  gt len L  3   Hope it helps you or another person having the concern

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Expanding on John La Rooy  Python - List of unique dictionaries  answer  making it a bit more flexible   def dedup dict list list of dicts  list  columns  list  - gt  list      return list     join row column  for column in columns   row                 for row in list of dicts  values      Calling Function   sorted list of dicts   dedup dict list      unsorted list of dicts    id    name

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Heres an implementation with little memory overhead at the cost of not being as compact as the rest   values       id  2  name   hanna    age  30                id  1  name   john    age  34                id  1  name   john    age  34                id  2  name   hanna    age  30                id  1  name   john    age  34    count      index   0 while index  lt  len values       if values index   id   in count          del values index      else          count values index   id      1         index    1   output      age   30   id   2   name    hanna      age   34   id   1   name    john

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Well all the answers mentioned here are good  but in some answers one can face error if the dictionary items have nested list or dictionary  so I propose simple answer  a    str i  for i in a  a   list set a   a    eval i  for i in a

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Since the id is sufficient for detecting duplicates  and the id is hashable  run  em through a dictionary that has the id as the key  The value for each key is the original dictionary   deduped dicts   dict  item  id    item  for item in list of dicts  values     In Python 3  values   doesn t return a list  you ll need to wrap the whole right-hand-side of that expression in list    and you can write the meat of the expression more economically as a dict comprehension   deduped dicts   list  item  id    item for item in list of dicts  values      Note that the result likely will not be in the same order as the original  If that s a requirement  you could use a Collections OrderedDict instead of a dict   As an aside  it may make a good deal of sense to just keep the data in a dictionary that uses the id as key to begin with

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In case the dictionaries are only uniquely identified by all items  ID is not available  you can use the answer using JSON  The following is an alternative that does not use JSON  and will work as long as all dictionary values are immutable   dict s  for s in set frozenset d items    for d in L

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Here s a reasonably compact solution  though I suspect not particularly efficient  to put it mildly     gt  gt  gt  ds      id  1  name   john    age  34               id  1  name   john    age  34               id  2  name   hanna    age  30               gt  gt  gt  map dict  set tuple sorted d items     for d in ds      age   30   id   2   name    hanna      age   34   id   1   name    john

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In python 3 6   what I ve tested   just use   import json   Toy example  but will also work for your case  myListOfDicts      a  1  b  2    a  1  b  2    a  1  b  3    Start by sorting each dictionary by keys myListOfDictsSorted    sorted d items    for d in myListOfDicts    Using json methods with set   to get unique dict myListOfUniqueDicts   list map json loads set map json dumps  myListOfDictsSorted      print myListOfUniqueDicts    Explanation  we re mapping the json dumps to encode the dictionaries as json objects  which are immutable  set can then be used to produce an iterable of unique immutables  Finally  we convert back to our dictionary representation using json loads  Note that initially  one must sort by keys to arrange the dictionaries in a unique form  This is valid for Python 3 6  since dictionaries are ordered by default

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A quick-and-dirty solution is just by generating a new list   sortedlist       for item in listwhichneedssorting      if item not in sortedlist          sortedlist append item

[python] Python - List of unique dictionaries

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