I am struggling with the following problem: I want to convert an OrderedDict like this:

OrderedDict([('method', 'constant'), ('data', '1.225')])

into a regular dict like this:

{'method': 'constant', 'data':1.225}

because I have to store it as string in a database. After the conversion the order is not important anymore, so I can spare the ordered feature anyway.

Thanks for any hint or solutions,

Ben

>>> from collections import OrderedDict
>>> OrderedDict([('method', 'constant'), ('data', '1.225')])
OrderedDict([('method', 'constant'), ('data', '1.225')])
>>> dict(OrderedDict([('method', 'constant'), ('data', '1.225')]))
{'data': '1.225', 'method': 'constant'}
>>>

However, to store it in a database it’d be much better to convert it to a format such as JSON or Pickle. With Pickle you even preserve the order!

Even though this is a year old question, I would like to say that using dict will not help if you have an ordered dict within the ordered dict. The simplest way that could convert those recursive ordered dict will be

import json
from collections import OrderedDict
input_dict = OrderedDict([('method', 'constant'), ('recursive', OrderedDict([('m', 'c')]))])
output_dict = json.loads(json.dumps(input_dict))
print output_dict

It is easy to convert your OrderedDict to a regular Dict like this:

dict(OrderedDict([('method', 'constant'), ('data', '1.225')]))

If you have to store it as a string in your database, using JSON is the way to go. That is also quite simple, and you don’t even have to worry about converting to a regular dict:

import json
d = OrderedDict([('method', 'constant'), ('data', '1.225')])
dString = json.dumps(d)

Or dump the data directly to a file:

with open('outFile.txt','w') as o:
    json.dump(d, o)

If you are looking for a recursive version without using the json module:

def ordereddict_to_dict(value):
    for k, v in value.items():
        if isinstance(v, dict):
            value[k] = ordereddict_to_dict(v)
    return dict(value)

Here is what seems simplest and works in python 3.7

from collections import OrderedDict

d = OrderedDict([('method', 'constant'), ('data', '1.225')])
d2 = dict(d)  # Now a normal dict

Now to check this:

>>> type(d2)
<class 'dict'>
>>> isinstance(d2, OrderedDict)
False
>>> isinstance(d2, dict)
True

NOTE: This also works, and gives same result –

>>> {**d}
{'method': 'constant', 'data': '1.225'}
>>> {**d} == d2
True

As well as this –

>>> dict(d)
{'method': 'constant', 'data': '1.225'}
>>> dict(d) == {**d}
True

Cheers

If somehow you want a simple, yet different solution, you can use the {**dict} syntax:

from collections import OrderedDict

ordered = OrderedDict([('method', 'constant'), ('data', '1.225')])
regular = {**ordered}

Its simple way

>>import json 
>>from collection import OrderedDict

>>json.dumps(dict(OrderedDict([('method', 'constant'), ('data', '1.225')])))