Convert Dictionary to List of Tuples in Python

In this tutorial, we will look at how to convert a Python dictionary to a list of (key, value) tuples. For example, you have a dictionary {key1: value1, key2: value2} and you want to get the (key: value) tuple pairs in a list – [(key1, value1), (key2, value2)].

How to convert a dictionary to a list of tuples?

There are multiple ways to get a list of (key, value) tuple pairs from a dictionary. Some of which are –

1. You can use the dictionary’s .items() function and the list() function.
2. Use a loop to iterate over the dictionary items and add the (key, value) tuple pairs to a list.
3. Using list comprehension to construct the list of (key, value) tuple pairs.

Let’s look at examples of using the above methods to get a list of tuples from a dictionary.

Using items() and list() function

You can use a combination of the dictionary items() function and the list() function to convert a dictionary to a list of (key, value) tuples.

# create a dictionary
age_dict = {'Sam': 26, 'Emma': 21, 'Varun': 29, 'Zayn': 24}
# dictionary to list of tuples
age_ls = list(age_dict.items())
print(age_ls)

Output:

[('Sam', 26), ('Emma', 21), ('Varun', 29), ('Zayn', 24)]

We get the desired list of (key, value) tuple pairs. The dictionary items() function returns a view object containing the (key, value) tuple pairs, and the list() function converts the view object to a list.

Iterate over the dictionary items with a Loop

Here we use a loop to iterate over the items in the dictionary and then append the (key, value) tuple to our result list.

# create a dictionary
age_dict = {'Sam': 26, 'Emma': 21, 'Varun': 29, 'Zayn': 24}
# dictionary to list of tuples
age_ls = []
for key,val in age_dict.items():
    age_ls.append((key, val))
print(age_ls)

Output:

[('Sam', 26), ('Emma', 21), ('Varun', 29), ('Zayn', 24)]

We get the same result as above.

Using List Comprehension

The above method can be reduced to a single line using list comprehension.

# create a dictionary
age_dict = {'Sam': 26, 'Emma': 21, 'Varun': 29, 'Zayn': 24}
# dictionary to list of tuples
age_ls = [(key, val) for key,val in age_dict.items()]
print(age_ls)

Output:

[('Sam', 26), ('Emma', 21), ('Varun', 29), ('Zayn', 24)]

We get the same results as above. Here, we use list comprehension to build a list of (key, value) tuple pairs from the dictionary’s items.

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• Python view dictionary Keys and Values
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