Removing dicts with duplicate value from list of dicts

Question

I have a list of dicts as follows:

[{'ppm_error': -5.441115144810845e-07, 'key': 'Y7', 'obs_ion': 1054.5045550349998},
{'ppm_error': 2.3119997582222951e-07, 'key': 'Y9', 'obs_ion': 1047.547178035},
{'ppm_error': 2.3119997582222951e-07, 'key': 'Y9', 'obs_ion': 1381.24928035},
{'ppm_error': -2.5532659838679713e-06, 'key': 'Y4', 'obs_ion': 741.339467035},
{'ppm_error': 1.3036219678359603e-05, 'key': 'Y10', 'obs_ion': 1349.712302035},
{'ppm_error': 3.4259216556970878e-06, 'key': 'Y6', 'obs_ion': 941.424286035},
{'ppm_error': 1.1292770047090912e-06, 'key': 'Y2', 'obs_ion': 261.156025035},
{'ppm_error': 1.1292770047090912e-06, 'key': 'Y2', 'obs_ion': 389.156424565},
{'ppm_error': 9.326980606898406e-06, 'key': 'Y5', 'obs_ion': 667.3107950350001}
]

I want to remove dicts with duplicate keys such that only dicts with unique 'key' remain. It doesn't matter which dict ends up in the final list. So the final list should look as follows:

[{'ppm_error': -5.441115144810845e-07, 'key': 'Y7', 'obs_ion': 1054.5045550349998},
{'ppm_error': 2.3119997582222951e-07, 'key': 'Y9', 'obs_ion': 1381.24928035},
{'ppm_error': -2.5532659838679713e-06, 'key': 'Y4', 'obs_ion': 741.339467035},
{'ppm_error': 1.3036219678359603e-05, 'key': 'Y10', 'obs_ion': 1349.712302035},
{'ppm_error': 3.4259216556970878e-06, 'key': 'Y6', 'obs_ion': 941.424286035},
{'ppm_error': 1.1292770047090912e-06, 'key': 'Y2', 'obs_ion': 261.156025035},
{'ppm_error': 9.326980606898406e-06, 'key': 'Y5', 'obs_ion': 667.3107950350001}
]

Is it possible to use itertools.groupby function for doing this or is there another way of approaching this problem? Any suggestions?

Answer 1

If the order matters, then you can use collections.OrderedDict to collect all the items, like this

from collections import OrderedDict
print OrderedDict((d["key"], d) for d in my_list).values()

And if the order doesn't matter, you can use a normal dictionary, like this

print {d["key"]:d for d in my_list}.values()