How can I turn a list of dicts like this..

[{'a':1}, {'b':2}, {'c':1}, {'d':2}]

…into a single dict like this:

{'a':1, 'b':2, 'c':1, 'd':2}

This works for dictionaries of any length:

>>> result = {}
>>> for d in L:
...    result.update(d)
... 
>>> result
{'a':1,'c':1,'b':2,'d':2}

As a comprehension:

# Python >= 2.7
{k: v for d in L for k, v in d.items()}

# Python < 2.7
dict(pair for d in L for pair in d.items())

In case of Python 3.3+, there is a ChainMap collection:

>>> from collections import ChainMap
>>> a = [{'a':1},{'b':2},{'c':1},{'d':2}]
>>> dict(ChainMap(*a))
{'b': 2, 'c': 1, 'a': 1, 'd': 2}

Also see:

• What is the purpose of collections.ChainMap?

>>> L=[{'a': 1}, {'b': 2}, {'c': 1}, {'d': 2}]    
>>> dict(i.items()[0] for i in L)
{'a': 1, 'c': 1, 'b': 2, 'd': 2}

Note: the order of ‘b’ and ‘c’ doesn’t match your output because dicts are unordered

if the dicts can have more than one key/value

>>> dict(j for i in L for j in i.items())

For flat dictionaries you can do this:

from functools import reduce
reduce(lambda a, b: dict(a, **b), list_of_dicts)

This is similar to @delnan but offers the option to modify the k/v (key/value) items and I believe is more readable:

new_dict = {k:v for list_item in list_of_dicts for (k,v) in list_item.items()}

for instance, replace k/v elems as follows:

new_dict = {str(k).replace(" ","_"):v for list_item in list_of_dicts for (k,v) in list_item.items()}

unpacks the k,v tuple from the dictionary .items() generator after pulling the dict object out of the list

dict1.update( dict2 )

This is asymmetrical because you need to choose what to do with duplicate keys; in this case, dict2 will overwrite dict1. Exchange them for the other way.

EDIT: Ah, sorry, didn’t see that.

It is possible to do this in a single expression:

>>> from itertools import chain
>>> dict( chain( *map( dict.items, theDicts ) ) )
{'a': 1, 'c': 1, 'b': 2, 'd': 2}

No credit to me for this last!

However, I’d argue that it might be more Pythonic (explicit > implicit, flat > nested ) to do this with a simple for loop. YMMV.

You can use join function from funcy library:

from funcy import join
join(list_of_dicts)

Little improvement for @dietbuddha answer with dictionary unpacking from PEP 448, for me, it`s more readable this way, also, it is faster as well:

from functools import reduce
result_dict = reduce(lambda a, b: {**a, **b}, list_of_dicts)

But keep in mind, this works only with Python 3.5+ versions.

>>> dictlist = [{'a':1},{'b':2},{'c':1},{'d':2, 'e':3}]
>>> dict(kv for d in dictlist for kv in d.iteritems())
{'a': 1, 'c': 1, 'b': 2, 'e': 3, 'd': 2}
>>>

Note I added a second key/value pair to the last dictionary to show it works with multiple entries. Also keys from dicts later in the list will overwrite the same key from an earlier dict.

dic1 = {‘Maria’:12, ‘Paco’:22, ‘Jose’:23} dic2 = {‘Patricia’:25, ‘Marcos’:22 ‘Tomas’:36}

dic2 = dict(dic1.items() + dic2.items())

and this will be the outcome:

dic2 {‘Jose’: 23, ‘Marcos’: 22, ‘Patricia’: 25, ‘Tomas’: 36, ‘Paco’: 22, ‘Maria’: 12}