The `dict.get` method
Last Updated: February 3, 2018 12:20 PM UTC
Last edited by:
Joseph <joseph@josephbanks.me>
Initial Commit
THIS IS FAKE DEMO DATA

Often while using dictionaries in Python, you may run into KeyErrors. This error is raised when you try to access a key that isn't present in your dictionary. Python gives you some neat ways to handle them.

The dict.get method will return the value for the key if it exists, and None (or a default value that you specify) if the key doesn't exist. Hence it will never raise a KeyError. 

>>> my_dict = {"foo": 1, "bar": 2}
>>> print(my_dict.get("foobar"))
None
Below, 3 is the default value to be returned, because the key doesn't exist- 
>>> print(my_dict.get("foobar", 3))
3
Some other methods for handling KeyErrors gracefully are the dict.setdefault method and collections.defaultdict (check out the !defaultdict tag).