Python: Writing Nested Dictionary to CSV

Question

I'm trying to write a nested dictionary to a .csv file. Here is is a simple example:

import csv
import itertools

fields = [ 'org', '2015', '2014', '2013' ]
dw     = { 'orgname1': { '2015' : 2, '2014' : 1, '2013' : 1 },
           'orgname2': { '2015' : 1, '2014' : 2, '2013' : 3 },
           'orgname3': { '2015' : 1, '2014' : 3, '2013' : 1 }
        }

with open("test_output.csv", "wb") as f:
    w = csv.writer( f )
    years = dw.values()[0].keys()
    for key in dw.keys():
        w.writerow([key, [dw[key][year] for year in years]])

This gets me a table with two columns: the first contains orgname; the second contains [2, 1, 1] (or the corresponding values from the sub-dictionary). I'd like a table with four columns: one for orgname and then three for the corresponding list elements.

Answer 1

This looks like a job for DictWriter:

import csv
import itertools
import sys

fields = [ 'org', '2015', '2014', '2013' ]
dw     = { 'orgname1': { '2015' : 2, '2014' : 1, '2013' : 1 },
           'orgname2': { '2015' : 1, '2014' : 2, '2013' : 3 },
           'orgname3': { '2015' : 1, '2014' : 3, '2013' : 1 }
        }

w = csv.DictWriter( sys.stdout, fields )
for key,val in sorted(dw.items()):
    row = {'org': key}
    row.update(val)
    w.writerow(row)

Answer 2

Alternative implementation using DictWriter and with headers

import csv
import itertools

fields = [ 'org', '2015', '2014', '2013' ]
dw     = { 'orgname1': { '2015' : 2, '2014' : 1, '2013' : 1 },
           'orgname2': { '2015' : 1, '2014' : 2, '2013' : 3 },
           'orgname3': { '2015' : 1, '2014' : 3, '2013' : 1 }
        }

with open("test_output.csv", "wb") as f:
    w = csv.DictWriter(f, fields)
    w.writeheader()
    for k in dw:
        w.writerow({field: dw[k].get(field) or k for field in fields})

Output:

org,2015,2014,2013
orgname1,2,1,1
orgname3,1,3,1
orgname2,1,2,3