5 Ways to Loop a Dictionary in Python

Dictionaries are the most used data structure in Python and one has to often loop through it.

In this article, we take a look at 5 ways to loop a dictionary.

Example 1: Loop Through Dict Keys

week_numbers = {1: 'Monday', 2: 'Tuesday', 3: 'Wednesday', 4: 'Thursday', 5: 'Friday'}

for week_number in week_numbers:
    print(week_number)

Output:

1
2
3
4
5

Example 2: Loop Through Dict Values

week_names = {1: 'Monday', 2: 'Tuesday', 3: 'Wednesday', 4: 'Thursday', 5: 'Friday'}

for week_name in week_names.values():
    print(week_name)


Output:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday

Example 3: Loop Through Dict Key-Value Pairs

week_days = {1: 'Monday', 2: 'Tuesday', 3: 'Wednesday', 4: 'Thursday', 5: 'Friday'}

for week_number, week_name in week_days.items():
    print(f"Week {week_number}: {week_name}")


Output:

Week 1: Monday
Week 2: Tuesday
Week 3: Wednesday
Week 4: Thursday
Week 5: Friday

Example 4: Loop Through Sorted Keys

week_numbers = {5: 'Friday', 3: 'Wednesday', 1: 'Monday', 4: 'Thursday', 2: 'Tuesday'}

for week_number in sorted(week_numbers):
    print(week_number)


Output:

1
2
3
4
5

Example 5: Loop Through Keys and Indexes

week_names = {1: 'Monday', 2: 'Tuesday', 3: 'Wednesday', 4: 'Thursday', 5: 'Friday'}

for index, week_number in enumerate(week_names, start=1):
    print(f"Week {week_number} (Index: {index}): {week_names[week_number]}")

Output:

Week 1 (Index: 1): Monday
Week 2 (Index: 2): Tuesday
Week 3 (Index: 3): Wednesday
Week 4 (Index: 4): Thursday
Week 5 (Index: 5): Friday