How to print out a dictionary nicely in Python?

Question

I've just started to learn python and I'm building a text game. I want an inventory system, but I can't seem to print out the dictionary without it looking ugly.

This is what I have so far:

def inventory():     for numberofitems in len(inventory_content.keys()):         inventory_things = list(inventory_content.keys())         inventory_amounts = list(inventory_content.values())         print(inventory_things[numberofitems]) 

Answer 1

I like the pprint module (Pretty Print) included in Python. It can be used to either print the object, or format a nice string version of it.

import pprint  # Prints the nicely formatted dictionary pprint.pprint(dictionary)  # Sets 'pretty_dict_str' to the formatted string value pretty_dict_str = pprint.pformat(dictionary) 

But it sounds like you are printing out an inventory, which users will likely want shown as something more like the following:

def print_inventory(dct):     print("Items held:")     for item, amount in dct.items():  # dct.iteritems() in Python 2         print("{} ({})".format(item, amount))  inventory = {     "shovels": 3,     "sticks": 2,     "dogs": 1, }  print_inventory(inventory) 

which prints:

Items held: shovels (3) sticks (2) dogs (1) 

Answer 2

My favorite way:

import json print(json.dumps(dictionary, indent=4, sort_keys=True))