How to select specific attribute from yaml in python

Question

I'm a beginner in python and trying to pull data from yaml file to use in a python script, say my yaml file looks like this:

---
genre: horror
film:
 -name: conjuring
 -id: 1234
film:
 -name: halloween
 -id: 1222

How would I select each part of the yaml, for example say I want the id of the film with the name halloween using python? I managed to read the file in by writing this:

import yaml

with open("films.yaml", 'r') as stream:
    try:
        code = yaml.load(stream)
        print(code.each)
    except yaml.YAMLError as exc:
        print(exc)

but that only gives me the following output and doesn't display everything:

{'genre': 'horror', 'film': {'-name': 'halloween', '-id': 1222}}

Any help is appreciated.

Dictionaries can't have duplicate keys. You can't have two `'film'` entries. — Peter Wood, Sep 11 '18 at 20:26
@PeterWood ah ok, so what would be the best way to have multiple films defined in yaml? — user10349611, Sep 11 '18 at 20:29
Possible duplicate of [Getting duplicate keys in YAML using Python](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44904290/getting-duplicate-keys-in-yaml-using-python) — Peter Wood, Sep 12 '18 at 08:56
That makes this a different question really. I've marked it as a duplicate as a quick search revealed this: [Getting duplicate keys in YAML using Python](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44904290/getting-duplicate-keys-in-yaml-using-python) — Peter Wood, Sep 12 '18 at 08:57

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 11 '18 at 20:37

0

You can represent a list of films in yaml like this...

---
genre: horror
films:
- name: conjuring
  id: 1234
- name: halloween
  id: 1222

answered Sep 11 '18 at 20:37

dekim

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 11 '18 at 20:42

As dekin notes, the problem is with your yaml syntax. You're providing duplicate entries for the key "film" rather than a list.

yaml lists should be of the format:

list_key:
    - item_1_field_1: foo
      item_1_field_2: bar
    - item_2_field_1: baz
      item_2_field_2: goof

How to select specific attribute from yaml in python

2 Answers2