easydotdict 1.1.1

Effortless nested dictionary access — dot notation, safe missing keys, auto-vivification, and more

easydotdict

Make nested dictionaries effortless — dot-notation access, safe missing-key handling, auto-vivification, deep path operations, and pretty-printing. Pure Python, no dependencies.

from easydotdict import dotdict

d = dotdict({'user': {'profile': {'name': 'Alice'}}})
print(d.user.profile.name)       # Alice
print(d['user'].profile.name)    # same
print(d.user.email)              # None (safe, no error)

d.name = 'Alice'
d.name.character = 5  # auto-converts scalar -> nested: {'Alice': {'character': 5}}

d.config.database.host = 'localhost'  # auto-creates path
d.put('server.port', 8080)            # or use path string
print(d.dig('user.name'))             # Alice (deep path getter)

flat = d.flatten()                    # {'user.profile.name': 'Alice', ...}
restored = dotdict.unflatten(flat)   # reverse

d.merge({'settings': {'debug': True}})  # deep merge
print(d)                                # indented JSON

Features

• Dot notation — d.user.profile.name instead of d['user']['profile']['name']
• Dual access — dot and bracket notation work interchangeably
• Safe access — d.missing returns None, no KeyError/AttributeError
• Auto-vivification — d.a.b.c = value auto-creates intermediate structures
• Scalar auto-conversion — d.name = 'Alice'; d.name.character = 5 wraps scalar into {'Alice': {'character': 5}}
• Deep path operations — dig, put, has, get with dot-separated strings
• Cursors — lightweight views into nested paths that mutate the original via cursor(path)
• Diff & Patch — compare two dotdicts with diff(), apply changes with patch()
• Batch operations — set_many({path: value}) and delete(*paths) for bulk work
• Search — find(name) returns all dot-paths matching a key name
• Type validation — expect(schema) validates types at runtime
• Change tracking — on_change(path, cb) fires callbacks on mutation
• Freeze — freeze() / unfreeze() prevents further modification
• Flatten / Unflatten — recursive flatten and restore with flatten() and unflatten()
• Deep merge — update() and merge() merge recursively, preserving existing keys
• Clone — clone() returns a deep independent copy
• Empty check — is_empty() checks if the dict has no keys
• Auto-conversion — nested dicts and lists containing dicts are wrapped automatically
• Pretty-print — print(d) outputs indented JSON
• Comparisons — scalars support <, >, <=, >= comparisons
• f-string ready — format specs like {d.name:>10} delegate to the underlying value
• to_dict() — recursively converts back to plain dicts and lists
• Decorators — @dotdictify, @defaults, @expect_schema, @freeze
• Pure Python — standard library only, Python 3.8+

Install

pip install easydotdict

Documentation

See docs.md for full API reference, edge cases, and examples.

License

MIT