Python: Convert dictionary to list of tuples/ pairs

In this article, we will discuss different ways to convert all key-value pairs of a dictionary to a list of tuples.

Table of Contents

• Convert all pairs of dictionary to list of tuples using items()
• Use zip() to convert all pairs of dictionary to list of tuples
• Use List comprehension to convert all pairs of dictionary to list of tuples
• Use for-loop to convert all pairs of dictionary to list of tuples
• Convert selected pairs of dict to list of tuples in Python

Convert all pairs of dictionary to list of tuples using items()

In Python, dictionary class provides a function items(), which returns an iterable sequence (dict_items) of all key-value pairs of the dictionary. This retuned sequence is a view of the actual key-value pairs in the dictionary. We can use pass this iterable sequence to the list() function to get a list of tuples. For example,

# Dictionary of string and int
word_freq = {
    "Hello": 56,
    "at": 23,
    "test": 43,
    "this": 78,
    "why": 89,
    "Hi": 51,
    "How": 79
}

# Convert all key-value pairs of dict to list of tuples
list_of_tuples = list(word_freq.items())

print(list_of_tuples)

Output:

[('Hello', 56),
 ('at', 23),
 ('test', 43),
 ('this', 78),
 ('why', 89),
 ('Hi', 51),
 ('How', 79)]

We converted all key-value pairs of a dictionary to a list of tuples.

Use zip() to convert all pairs of dictionary to list of tuples

In Python, the zip() function accepts multiple iterable sequences as argument and returns a merged sequence. In the returned sequence element at ith position is a tuple containing items at ith position of passed sequences.

In dictionary,

• dict.keys(): Returns an iterable sequence of all keys of dictionary
• dict.values(): Returns an iterable sequence of all values of dictionary

Then we can pass these two sequences (keys and values ) to the zip() function and it will create a list of tuples, where ith tuple in list will contain the ith key and ith value of the dictionary. For example,

# Dictionary of string and int
word_freq = {
    "Hello": 56,
    "at": 23,
    "test": 43,
    "this": 78,
    "why": 89,
    "Hi": 51,
    "How": 79
}

# Convert all key-value pairs of dict to list of tuples
list_of_tuples = list(zip(word_freq.keys(), word_freq.values()))

print(list_of_tuples)

Output:

[('Hello', 56),
 ('at', 23),
 ('test', 43),
 ('this', 78),
 ('why', 89),
 ('Hi', 51),
 ('How', 79)]

We converted all key-value pairs of a dictionary to a list of tuples.

Use List comprehension to convert all pairs of dictionary to list of tuples

dict.items() returns an iterable sequence of all key-value pairs of dictionary. We can iterate over this sequence using a list comprehension and build a list of tuples. In this list of tuple the ith tuple contains the ith key-value pair of dictionary. For example,

# Dictionary of string and int
word_freq = {
    "Hello": 56,
    "at": 23,
    "test": 43,
    "this": 78,
    "why": 89,
    "Hi": 51,
    "How": 79
}

# Convert all key-value pairs of dict to list of tuples
list_of_tuples = [  (key, value) 
                    for key, value in word_freq.items()] 

print(list_of_tuples)

Output:

[('Hello', 56),
 ('at', 23),
 ('test', 43),
 ('this', 78),
 ('why', 89),
 ('Hi', 51),
 ('How', 79)]

We converted all key-value pairs of a dictionary to a list of tuples.

Use for-loop to convert all pairs of dictionary to list of tuples

We can create an empty list of tuples and then iterate over all-key pairs of dictionary using a for loop and add each key-value pair one by one to the list. For example,

# Dictionary of string and int
word_freq = {
    "Hello": 56,
    "at": 23,
    "test": 43,
    "this": 78,
    "why": 89,
    "Hi": 51,
    "How": 79
}

# Create empty list
list_of_tuples = [] 
  
# Add all key-value pairs of dict to list of tuples
for key in word_freq: 
   list_of_tuples.append((key, word_freq[key])) 

print(list_of_tuples)

Output:

[('Hello', 56),
 ('at', 23),
 ('test', 43),
 ('this', 78),
 ('why', 89),
 ('Hi', 51),
 ('How', 79)]

We converted all key-value pairs of a dictionary to a list of tuples.

Convert selected pairs of dict to list of tuples in Python

In all the previous examples, we converted all key-value pairs of dictionary to a list of tuples. But what if we want to select only few pairs from dictionary based on a condition and convert them to list of tuples.

For example, select key-value pairs from dictionary where value is greater than 50 and convert them to a list,

# Dictionary of string and int
word_freq = {
    "Hello": 56,
    "at": 23,
    "test": 43,
    "this": 78,
    "why": 89,
    "Hi": 51,
    "How": 79
}

# Select pairs from dictionary whose value is greater than 50
# Convert these pairs to list of tuples 
list_of_tuples = [  (key, value) 
                    for key, value in word_freq.items()
                    if value > 50] 

print(list_of_tuples)

Output:

[('Hello', 56),
 ('this', 78),
 ('why', 89),
 ('Hi', 51),
 ('How', 79)] 

We converted only a few pairs of dictionary to a list of tuples.

Summary

We learned about different ways to convert key-value pairs of dictionary to a list of tuples.