Print specific keys and values from a deep nested dictionary in python 3.X

Question

I am new to python and I've tried to search but can seem to find a sample of what I am trying to accomplish. Any ideas are much appreciated. I am working with a nested dictionary with lots of key and values but I only want to print specific ones using a filtered list variable.

my_nested_dict = {"global": {"peers": {"15.1.1.1": {"remote_id": "15.1.1.1", "address_family": {"ipv4": {"sent_prefixes": 1, "received_prefixes": 4, "accepted_prefixes": 4}}, "remote_as": 65002, "uptime": 13002, "is_enabled": true, "is_up": true, "description": "== R3 BGP Neighbor ==", "local_as": 65002}}, "router_id": "15.1.1.2"}}

I would like to a filter through it and choose which keys and values to print out

filtered_list = ['peers', 'remote_id', 'remote_as', 'uptime']

and achieve a out out of

peers: 15.1.1.1
remote_id: 15.1.1.1
remote_as: 65002
uptime: 13002

Answer 1

Use recursion and isinstance:

my_nested_dict = {"global": {"peers": {"15.1.1.1": {"remote_id": "15.1.1.1", "address_family": {"ipv4": {"sent_prefixes": 1, "received_prefixes": 4, "accepted_prefixes": 4}}, "remote_as": 65002, "uptime": 13002, "is_enabled": True, "is_up": True, "description": "== R3 BGP Neighbor ==", "local_as": 65002}}, "router_id": "15.1.1.2"}}

filtered_list = ['peers', 'remote_id', 'remote_as', 'uptime']

def seek_keys(d, key_list):
    for k, v in d.items():
        if k in key_list:
            if isinstance(v, dict):
                print(k + ": " + list(v.keys())[0])
            else:
                print(k + ": " + str(v))
        if isinstance(v, dict):
            seek_keys(v, key_list)

seek_keys(my_nested_dict, filtered_list)

Note: There is a built in assumption here that if you ever want the "value" from a key whose value is another dictionary, you get the first key.