How to format a dictionary with a list of items in Python

Question

I have a python dictionary that I want to look like this:

{"name": "BOB", 
    "item1": {
        "item name": "bread",
        "quantity of item ": 10,
        "price of item": "3.00"
    }, 
    "item2": {
        "item name": "milk",
        "quantity of item ": 15,
        "price of item": "9.00"
    }
}

currently it looks like this

{"name": "BOB", "item1": {"item name": "bread", "quantity of item ": 10, "price of item": "3.00"}, "item2": {"item name": "milk", "quantity of item ": 15, "price of item": "9.00"}}

The list of items can be different and does not have a fixed amount of items, so I would also need to to know how to do that

I have tried to add new lines in the dictionaries but it would not work and it would just put '\n' in to my dictionary

_I have a python dictionary that I want to look like this_ In what context? Printed on the screen? Written to a file? — John Gordon, Dec 01 '22 at 03:23
use [`pprint`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/pprint.html) — bn_ln, Dec 01 '22 at 03:24
I am looking to write the dictionary to a JSON so I would just json.dump to add the formatted dictionary — Aryan Vallabhbhai, Dec 01 '22 at 03:26
`pprint` for printing to the console, `pprint.pformat` for building a string representation of the pretty-printed version, `json.dumps` with the `indent` param for JSON. — Zac Anger, Dec 01 '22 at 03:27
JSON example: [How to prettyprint a JSON file?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12943819/how-to-prettyprint-a-json-file) — Zac Anger, Dec 01 '22 at 03:27
The output from `pprint` is quite readable, but it does not exactly match your format. — John Gordon, Dec 01 '22 at 03:32

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 01 '22 at 03:39

If you're trying to json.dump() it into a JSON file, using the json.dump() function you could pass in the indent argument for indentation (appears to be what you want) You can read more about it here
An example:

json.dump(jsonData, jsonFile, indent=2) # indentation is usually in spaces, so 2 would mean 2 spaces indentation, but you can replace it with '\t' for tabs

All this does is add indentation to the file to make it easier to read

How to format a dictionary with a list of items in Python

1 Answers1