How to iterate through a dictionary in Python?

In Python, you can iterate through a dictionary using loops such as for loops. In the for loop itself, you can iterate through keys, values, or key-value pairs (items) of the dictionary. Let us see these methods one by one.

1. Using KEYS in FOR loop

By default while iterating through a dictionary using a for loop, the loop will iterate through the keys. So, you don’t need to specify the dictionary-specific method keys(). Here is an example:

my_dictionary = {'a': 1001, 'b': 1002, 'c': 1003, 'd': 1004}

# Iterating through keys
for key in my_dictionary:
    print(key)

2. Using VALUES in FOR loop

If you want to iterate through the values of the dictionary, then use the dictionary-specific method values(). Here is an example:

my_dictionary = {'a': 1001, 'b': 1002, 'c': 1003, 'd': 1004}

# Iterating through values
for value in my_dictionary.values():
    print(value)

3. Using KEY-VALUE pairs in FOR loop

In case, if you want to fetch both the key and the value while iterating through a dictionary, then use the method like items() in python version 3.x and iteritems() in version 2.x. Here are the examples:

For Python version 3.x

my_dictionary = {'a': 1001, 'b': 1002, 'c': 1003, 'd': 1004}

# Iterating through key-value pairs
for key, value in my_dictionary.items():
    print(f"Key: {key}, Value: {value}")

For Python version 2.x

my_dictionary = {'a': 1001, 'b': 1002, 'c': 1003, 'd': 1004}

# Iterating through key-value pairs
for key, value in my_dictionary.iteritems():
    print("Key: ", key ," Value: ", value)

Related Articles

• How to access the index while iterating a sequence with a for loop in python?
• How to find the index of an item in a list in python?

Reference

• Read more about Python’s looping techniques at Python Docs.