Comparing two dictionaries and checking how many (key, value) pairs are equal

Question

If you want to know how many values match in both the dictionaries, you should have said that :)

Maybe something like this:

shared_items = {k: x[k] for k in x if k in y and x[k] == y[k]}
print len(shared_items)

What you want to do is simply x==y

What you do is not a good idea, because the items in a dictionary are not supposed to have any order. You might be comparing [('a',1),('b',1)] with [('b',1), ('a',1)] (same dictionaries, different order).

For example, see this:

>>> x = dict(a=2, b=2,c=3, d=4)
>>> x
{'a': 2, 'c': 3, 'b': 2, 'd': 4}
>>> y = dict(b=2,c=3, d=4)
>>> y
{'c': 3, 'b': 2, 'd': 4}
>>> zip(x.iteritems(), y.iteritems())
[(('a', 2), ('c', 3)), (('c', 3), ('b', 2)), (('b', 2), ('d', 4))]

The difference is only one item, but your algorithm will see that all items are different

def dict_compare(d1, d2):
    d1_keys = set(d1.keys())
    d2_keys = set(d2.keys())
    shared_keys = d1_keys.intersection(d2_keys)
    added = d1_keys - d2_keys
    removed = d2_keys - d1_keys
    modified = {o : (d1[o], d2[o]) for o in shared_keys if d1[o] != d2[o]}
    same = set(o for o in shared_keys if d1[o] == d2[o])
    return added, removed, modified, same

x = dict(a=1, b=2)
y = dict(a=2, b=2)
added, removed, modified, same = dict_compare(x, y)

dic1 == dic2

From python docs:

The following examples all return a dictionary equal to {"one": 1, "two": 2, "three": 3}:

>>> a = dict(one=1, two=2, three=3)
>>> b = {'one': 1, 'two': 2, 'three': 3}
>>> c = dict(zip(['one', 'two', 'three'], [1, 2, 3]))
>>> d = dict([('two', 2), ('one', 1), ('three', 3)])
>>> e = dict({'three': 3, 'one': 1, 'two': 2})
>>> a == b == c == d == e
True

Providing keyword arguments as in the first example only works for keys that are valid Python identifiers. Otherwise, any valid keys can be used.

Comparison is valid for both python2 and python3.

Since it seems nobody mentioned deepdiff, I will add it here for completeness. I find it very convenient for getting diff of (nested) objects in general:

Installation

pip install deepdiff

Sample code

import deepdiff
import json

dict_1 = {
    "a": 1,
    "nested": {
        "b": 1,
    }
}

dict_2 = {
    "a": 2,
    "nested": {
        "b": 2,
    }
}

diff = deepdiff.DeepDiff(dict_1, dict_2)
print(json.dumps(diff, indent=4))

Output

{
    "values_changed": {
        "root['a']": {
            "new_value": 2,
            "old_value": 1
        },
        "root['nested']['b']": {
            "new_value": 2,
            "old_value": 1
        }
    }
}

Note about pretty-printing the result for inspection: The above code works if both dicts have the same attribute keys (with possibly different attribute values as in the example). However, if an "extra" attribute is present is one of the dicts, json.dumps() fails with

TypeError: Object of type PrettyOrderedSet is not JSON serializable

Solution: use diff.to_json() and json.loads() / json.dumps() to pretty-print:

import deepdiff
import json

dict_1 = {
    "a": 1,
    "nested": {
        "b": 1,
    },
    "extra": 3
}

dict_2 = {
    "a": 2,
    "nested": {
        "b": 2,
    }
}

diff = deepdiff.DeepDiff(dict_1, dict_2)
print(json.dumps(json.loads(diff.to_json()), indent=4))  

Output:

{
    "dictionary_item_removed": [
        "root['extra']"
    ],
    "values_changed": {
        "root['a']": {
            "new_value": 2,
            "old_value": 1
        },
        "root['nested']['b']": {
            "new_value": 2,
            "old_value": 1
        }
    }
}

Alternative: use pprint, results in a different formatting:

import pprint

# same code as above

pprint.pprint(diff, indent=4)

Output:

{   'dictionary_item_removed': [root['extra']],
    'values_changed': {   "root['a']": {   'new_value': 2,
                                           'old_value': 1},
                          "root['nested']['b']": {   'new_value': 2,
                                                     'old_value': 1}}}

I'm new to python but I ended up doing something similar to @mouad

unmatched_item = set(dict_1.items()) ^ set(dict_2.items())
len(unmatched_item) # should be 0

The XOR operator (^) should eliminate all elements of the dict when they are the same in both dicts.

Just use:

assert cmp(dict1, dict2) == 0