dictionary - Python - List of unique dictionaries

Question

Let's say I got a list of dictionaries:

[
    {'id': 1, 'name': 'john', 'age': 34},
    {'id': 1, 'name': 'john', 'age': 34},
    {'id': 2, 'name': 'hanna', 'age': 30},
]

and I need to obtain a list of unique dictionaries (removing the duplicates):

[
    {'id': 1, 'name': 'john', 'age': 34},
    {'id': 2, 'name': 'hanna', 'age': 30},
]

Can anyone help me with the most efficient way to achieve this in Python?

Answer 1

So make a temporary dict with the key being the id. This filters out the duplicates. The values() of the dict will be the list

In Python2.7

>>> L=[
... {'id':1,'name':'john', 'age':34},
... {'id':1,'name':'john', 'age':34},
... {'id':2,'name':'hanna', 'age':30},
... ]
>>> {v['id']:v for v in L}.values()
[{'age': 34, 'id': 1, 'name': 'john'}, {'age': 30, 'id': 2, 'name': 'hanna'}]

In Python3

>>> L=[
... {'id':1,'name':'john', 'age':34},
... {'id':1,'name':'john', 'age':34},
... {'id':2,'name':'hanna', 'age':30},
... ] 
>>> list({v['id']:v for v in L}.values())
[{'age': 34, 'id': 1, 'name': 'john'}, {'age': 30, 'id': 2, 'name': 'hanna'}]

In Python2.5/2.6

>>> L=[
... {'id':1,'name':'john', 'age':34},
... {'id':1,'name':'john', 'age':34},
... {'id':2,'name':'hanna', 'age':30},
... ] 
>>> dict((v['id'],v) for v in L).values()
[{'age': 34, 'id': 1, 'name': 'john'}, {'age': 30, 'id': 2, 'name': 'hanna'}]