Python safe dictionary key access [duplicate]

Question

I am looking for a convenient, safe python dictionary key access approach. Here are 3 ways came to my mind.

data = {'color': 'yellow'}  # approach one color_1 = None if 'color' in data:     color_1 = data['color']  # approach two color_2 = data['color'] if 'color' in data else None   # approach three def safe(obj, key):     if key in obj:         return obj[key]     else:         return None  color_3 = safe(data, 'color')  #output print("{},{},{}".format(color_1, color_2, color_3)) 

All three methods work, of-course. But is there any simple out of the box way to achieve this without having to use excess ifs or custom functions?

I believe there should be, because this is a very common usage.

Answer 1

You missed the canonical method, dict.get():

color_1 = data.get('color') 

It'll return None if the key is missing. You can set a different default as a second argument:

color_2 = data.get('color', 'red')