In this Python tutorial, you will learn how to get the keys of a dictionary as a list, using keys() method of dict class, or using sequence unpacking operator.
Python – Get Keys in Dictionary as a List
Dictionary is a collection of key:value pairs. You can get all the keys in the dictionary as a Python List.
dict.keys()
returns an iterable of type dict_keys()
. You can convert this into a list using list()
.
Also, we can use *
operator, which unpacks an iterable. Unpack dict
or dict.keys()
in []
using *
operator. It creates a list with dictionary keys in it.
Examples
1. Get keys of a dictionary as a List
In this example, we will create a Dictionary with some initial values and then get all the keys as a List into a variable.
Python Program
#initialize dictionary aDict = { 'tallest building':'Burj Khalifa', 'longest river':'The Nile', 'biggest ocean':'The Pacific Ocean' } # get keys as list keys = list(aDict.keys()) #print keys print(keys)Try Online
Output
['tallest building', 'longest river', 'biggest ocean']
We got all the keys of dictionary as a list.
Reference tutorials for the above program
2. Get keys of a dictionary as a list using For Loop
In this example, we will create a list and add all the keys of dictionary one by one while iterating through the dictionary keys.
Python Program
#initialize dictionary aDict = { 'tallest building':'Burj Khalifa', 'longest river':'The Nile', 'biggest ocean':'The Pacific Ocean' } # get keys as list keys = [] for key in aDict.keys(): keys.append(key) #print keys print(keys)Try Online
Output
['tallest building', 'longest river', 'biggest ocean']
Reference tutorials for the above program
3. Get keys of a dictionary as a list using * Operator
*
operator unpacks a sequence. So, we will unpack the dictionary keys in []
, which will create a list.
Python Program
#initialize dictionary aDict = { 'tallest building':'Burj Khalifa', 'longest river':'The Nile', 'biggest ocean':'The Pacific Ocean' } # get keys as list keys = [*aDict.keys()] #print the list print(keys)Try Online
Output
['tallest building', 'longest river', 'biggest ocean']
You can also use the dictionary directly instead of dict.keys() as shown below.
Python Program
#initialize dictionary aDict = { 'tallest building':'Burj Khalifa', 'longest river':'The Nile', 'biggest ocean':'The Pacific Ocean' } # get keys as list keys = [*aDict] #print the list print(keys)Try Online
Output
['tallest building', 'longest river', 'biggest ocean']
Conclusion
In this Python Tutorial, we learned how to get the keys of a dictionary as Python List.