Python Counter() adding value to existing keys

Question

developer_base = Counter({
        'user1': {'XS': 0, 'S': 0, 'M': 0, 'L': 0, 'XL': 0},
        'user2': {'XS': 0, 'S': 0, 'M': 0, 'L': 0, 'XL': 0},
        'user3': {'XS': 0, 'S': 0, 'M': 0, 'L': 0, 'XL': 0},
        'user4': {'XS': 0, 'S': 0, 'M': 0, 'L': 0, 'XL': 0},
    })

Loop to gather Counter data:

for y in time_list:
                story_size = models.get_specific_story(y['story_id'])
                if story_size is not "?":
                    counts = Counter(y['minutes_spent'])
                    print(counts)
                    developer_base = developer_base + counts

Should Counterbe part of a for loop? story_size always equals one of the keys in the nested dict (S,XS,M etc). time_list has the ['minutes_spent'] which is the value that needs to add into the dictionary. the problem seems to be that time_list has a nested dict which is ['user']['first_name'] and it is equal to the developer_base keys for user1 through user4.

So I need to add up all the 'minutes_spent' in time_list for each user.

Update: JSON data

[{'project_slug': 'test', 'project_id': 19855, 'date': '2016-02-11', 'task_name': None, 'iteration_name': 'test', 'notes': '', 'user_id': 81946, 'story_id': 392435, 'iteration_id': 76693, 'story_name': 'test', 'user': {'id': 81946, 'last_name': 'test', 'first_name': 'user1', 'email': 'test', 'username': 'test'}, 'project_name': 'Development', 'id': 38231, 'minutes_spent': 240}]

The data is much larger but this is one whole section.

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:59

2

In the first snippet, you are abusing Counter. That snippet only works due to quirks in Python 2, where one can compare dicts. The values of a counter are supposed to be numbers.

Similarly, y['minutes_spent'] is an integer, and Counter(y['minutes_spent']) will just throw an error. In addition, story_size is not "?" does not do what you expect.

Assuming the real problem is

add up all the 'minutes_spent' in time_list for each user.

then you can use a Counter:

from collections import Counter
c = Counter()
for y in time_list:
    c[y['user']['id']] += y['minutes_spent']

edited May 23 '17 at 11:59

Community

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answered Feb 24 '16 at 04:33

phihag

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I'm having such a hard time understanding how Counter() actually works. your suggested did help! so I'm moving in the right direction. Thank you very much for clarifying the "quirk" for P2 that I was trying to use in P3.5. I did change the "is not" to "!=" instead as I only "assumed" the is not part would work. – SudoGaron Feb 24 '16 at 04:44
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`Counter` is basically a `defaultdict(int)` with a couple of helper methods. – phihag Feb 24 '16 at 04:45
Going through the docs on Counter now. I still think I'm not handling this correctly has in your example above for c[y['user']['id']] , when I add the next nested key of ['story_size'] it throws the TypeError: string indices must be integers. Are nested key:value assignments now allowed through Counter? – SudoGaron Feb 24 '16 at 05:04
@SudoGaron My magic crystall ball says that `y` is not what you think in that case, and completely unrelated to `Counter`. – phihag Feb 24 '16 at 05:06
ah yeah there is no key of story_size it's the actual variable created. c[y['user']['first_name'][story_size] won't work either since it's from a separate object not in `y`. I'll look into building keys from separate objects and see how it goes. – SudoGaron Feb 24 '16 at 05:13

Python Counter() adding value to existing keys

1 Answers1