Printing dictionaries (JSON) human readable

Question

Lets say I have a (nested) dictionary like this (notice the lists-values):

dic = {'level1':
            {'level2':(1, 2),
             'level3':
                    [
                     {'level4': (1, 2)},
                     {'level5': (1, 2)}
                    ]
             }
       }

I am looking for a proper way to print this dictionary, I am using json to do this:

import json
print json.dumps(dic, indent=4)

and the above code gives me the following output:

{
    "level1": {
        "level2": [
            1, 
            2
        ], 
        "level3": [
            {
                "level4": [
                    1, 
                    2
                ]
            }, 
            {
                "level5": [
                    1, 
                    2
                ]
            }
        ]
    }
}

While the above output is pretty good, it is still hard to read, specially if there are many levels and longer names. I have also tried yaml

import yaml
print yaml.dump(dic)

gives the following which looks strange:

level1:
  level2: !!python/tuple [1, 2]
  level3:
  - level4: !!python/tuple [1, 2]
  - level5: !!python/tuple [1, 2]

Are there any other libraries that can produce better dumps, I think the below output is easier to read:

"level1"
    |---"level2":            1, 2
    |---"level3": 
            |---"level4":    1, 2
            |---"level5":    1, 2

I believe the above is much easier to read and there may be python libraries out there that can do this.

The advantage of the default format is that it is valid JSON. I think you would need to roll your own print function to get what you are after. — Jason Sperske, Mar 07 '13 at 16:01
You can try [YAML](http://pyyaml.org/), but it's not in the standard library. — Pavel Anossov, Mar 07 '13 at 16:01
Top solution is in python: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/352098/how-to-pretty-print-json-from-the-command-line — Stedy, Mar 07 '13 at 16:20
Could it look that way because you have () around your list if units and not []? — Jason Sperske, Mar 07 '13 at 17:07

reptilicus · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-07T20:51:46.813

This is adapted from a activestate code example. Can't say its pretty, but may get you headed in the right direction:

myDict = {'level1':
         {'level2':(1, 2),
          'level3':
                [
                 {'level4': (1, 2)},
                 {'level5': (1, 2)},
                ], 
         'level6': [1,2,3], 
         'level7':{'level8': (1,2), 'level9': (1,2)}
         }
    }



def prettyPrint(dictionary, ident = '', braces=1):
    for key, value in dictionary.iteritems():
        if isinstance(value, dict):
            print '%s%s%s%s' % (ident, braces*'[', key, braces*']') 
            prettyPrint(value, ident+'  ', braces+1)
        elif isinstance(value, list):
            ndict=0
            for v in value:
                if isinstance(v, dict):
                    ndict += 1
            if ndict:
                print '%s%s' % (ident, key) 
                for e in value:
                    if isinstance(e, dict):
                        prettyPrint(e, ident+'  ', braces+1)
                    else: 
                         print ident+'%s : %s' %(key, e)
            else:
                print ident+'%s : %s' %(key, value)
        else:
            print ident+'%s : %s' %(key, value)

prettyPrint(myDict)


[level1]
  level2 : (1, 2)
  level3
    level4 : (1, 2)
    level5 : (1, 2)
  level6 : [1, 2, 3]
  [[level7]]
    level8 : (1, 2)
    level9 : (1, 2)

Printing dictionaries (JSON) human readable

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