Is it possible to do partial string formatting with the advanced string formatting methods, similar to the string template safe_substitute() function?

For example:

s = '{foo} {bar}'
s.format(foo='FOO') #Problem: raises KeyError 'bar'

You can trick it into partial formatting by overwriting the mapping:

import string

class FormatDict(dict):
    def __missing__(self, key):
        return "{" + key + "}"

s = '{foo} {bar}'
formatter = string.Formatter()
mapping = FormatDict(foo='FOO')
print(formatter.vformat(s, (), mapping))

printing

FOO {bar}

Of course this basic implementation only works correctly for basic cases.

If you know in what order you’re formatting things:

s = '{foo} {{bar}}'

Use it like this:

ss = s.format(foo='FOO') 
print ss 
>>> 'FOO {bar}'

print ss.format(bar='BAR')
>>> 'FOO BAR'

You can’t specify foo and bar at the same time – you have to do it sequentially.

You could use the partial function from functools which is short, most readable and also describes the coder’s intention:

from functools import partial

s = partial("{foo} {bar}".format, foo="FOO")
print s(bar="BAR")
# FOO BAR

This limitation of .format() – the inability to do partial substitutions – has been bugging me.

After evaluating writing a custom Formatter class as described in many answers here and even considering using third-party packages such as lazy_format, I discovered a much simpler inbuilt solution: Template strings

It provides similar functionality but also provides partial substitution thorough safe_substitute() method. The template strings need to have a $ prefix (which feels a bit weird – but the overall solution I think is better).

import string
template = string.Template('${x} ${y}')
try:
  template.substitute({'x':1}) # raises KeyError
except KeyError:
  pass

# but the following raises no error
partial_str = template.safe_substitute({'x':1}) # no error

# partial_str now contains a string with partial substitution
partial_template = string.Template(partial_str)
substituted_str = partial_template.safe_substitute({'y':2}) # no error
print substituted_str # prints '12'

Formed a convenience wrapper based on this:

class StringTemplate(object):
    def __init__(self, template):
        self.template = string.Template(template)
        self.partial_substituted_str = None

    def __repr__(self):
        return self.template.safe_substitute()

    def format(self, *args, **kws):
        self.partial_substituted_str = self.template.safe_substitute(*args, **kws)
        self.template = string.Template(self.partial_substituted_str)
        return self.__repr__()


>>> s = StringTemplate('${x}${y}')
>>> s
'${x}${y}'
>>> s.format(x=1)
'1${y}'
>>> s.format({'y':2})
'12'
>>> print s
12

Similarly a wrapper based on Sven’s answer which uses the default string formatting:

class StringTemplate(object):
    class FormatDict(dict):
        def __missing__(self, key):
            return "{" + key + "}"

    def __init__(self, template):
        self.substituted_str = template
        self.formatter = string.Formatter()

    def __repr__(self):
        return self.substituted_str

    def format(self, *args, **kwargs):
        mapping = StringTemplate.FormatDict(*args, **kwargs)
        self.substituted_str = self.formatter.vformat(self.substituted_str, (), mapping)

Not sure if this is ok as a quick workaround, but how about

s = '{foo} {bar}'
s.format(foo='FOO', bar='{bar}')

? :)

If you define your own Formatter which overrides the get_value method, you could use that to map undefined field names to whatever you wanted:

http://docs.python.org/library/string.html#string.Formatter.get_value

For instance, you could map bar to "{bar}" if bar isn’t in the kwargs.

However, that requires using the format() method of your Formatter object, not the string’s format() method.

>>> 'fd:{uid}:{{topic_id}}'.format(uid=123)
'fd:123:{topic_id}'

Try this out.

Thanks to Amber‘s comment, I came up with this:

import string

try:
    # Python 3
    from _string import formatter_field_name_split
except ImportError:
    formatter_field_name_split = str._formatter_field_name_split


class PartialFormatter(string.Formatter):
    def get_field(self, field_name, args, kwargs):
        try:
            val = super(PartialFormatter, self).get_field(field_name, args, kwargs)
        except (IndexError, KeyError, AttributeError):
            first, _ = formatter_field_name_split(field_name)
            val = '{' + field_name + '}', first
        return val

For me this was good enough:

>>> ss = 'dfassf {} dfasfae efaef {} fds'
>>> nn = ss.format('f1', '{}')
>>> nn
'dfassf f1 dfasfae efaef {} fds'
>>> n2 = nn.format('whoa')
>>> n2
'dfassf f1 dfasfae efaef whoa fds'

All the solutions I’ve found seemed to have issues with more advanced spec or conversion options. @SvenMarnach’s FormatPlaceholder is wonderfully clever but it doesn’t work properly with coercion (e.g. {a!s:>2s}) because it calls the __str__ method (in this example) instead of __format__ and you lose any additional formatting.

Here’s what I ended up with and some of it’s key features:

sformat('The {} is {}', 'answer')
'The answer is {}'

sformat('The answer to {question!r} is {answer:0.2f}', answer=42)
'The answer to {question!r} is 42.00'

sformat('The {} to {} is {:0.{p}f}', 'answer', 'everything', p=4)
'The answer to everything is {:0.4f}'

• provides similar interface as str.format (not just a mapping)
• supports more complex formatting options:
  • coercion {k!s} {!r}
  • nesting {k:>{size}}
  • getattr {k.foo}
  • getitem {k[0]}
  • coercion+formatting {k!s:>{size}}

import string


class SparseFormatter(string.Formatter):
    """
    A modified string formatter that handles a sparse set of format
    args/kwargs.
    """

    # re-implemented this method for python2/3 compatibility
    def vformat(self, format_string, args, kwargs):
        used_args = set()
        result, _ = self._vformat(format_string, args, kwargs, used_args, 2)
        self.check_unused_args(used_args, args, kwargs)
        return result

    def _vformat(self, format_string, args, kwargs, used_args, recursion_depth,
                 auto_arg_index=0):
        if recursion_depth < 0:
            raise ValueError('Max string recursion exceeded')
        result = []
        for literal_text, field_name, format_spec, conversion in \
                self.parse(format_string):

            orig_field_name = field_name

            # output the literal text
            if literal_text:
                result.append(literal_text)

            # if there's a field, output it
            if field_name is not None:
                # this is some markup, find the object and do
                #  the formatting

                # handle arg indexing when empty field_names are given.
                if field_name == '':
                    if auto_arg_index is False:
                        raise ValueError('cannot switch from manual field '
                                         'specification to automatic field '
                                         'numbering')
                    field_name = str(auto_arg_index)
                    auto_arg_index += 1
                elif field_name.isdigit():
                    if auto_arg_index:
                        raise ValueError('cannot switch from manual field '
                                         'specification to automatic field '
                                         'numbering')
                    # disable auto arg incrementing, if it gets
                    # used later on, then an exception will be raised
                    auto_arg_index = False

                # given the field_name, find the object it references
                #  and the argument it came from
                try:
                    obj, arg_used = self.get_field(field_name, args, kwargs)
                except (IndexError, KeyError):
                    # catch issues with both arg indexing and kwarg key errors
                    obj = orig_field_name
                    if conversion:
                        obj += '!{}'.format(conversion)
                    if format_spec:
                        format_spec, auto_arg_index = self._vformat(
                            format_spec, args, kwargs, used_args,
                            recursion_depth, auto_arg_index=auto_arg_index)
                        obj += ':{}'.format(format_spec)
                    result.append('{' + obj + '}')
                else:
                    used_args.add(arg_used)

                    # do any conversion on the resulting object
                    obj = self.convert_field(obj, conversion)

                    # expand the format spec, if needed
                    format_spec, auto_arg_index = self._vformat(
                        format_spec, args, kwargs,
                        used_args, recursion_depth-1,
                        auto_arg_index=auto_arg_index)

                    # format the object and append to the result
                    result.append(self.format_field(obj, format_spec))

        return ''.join(result), auto_arg_index


def sformat(s, *args, **kwargs):
    # type: (str, *Any, **Any) -> str
    """
    Sparse format a string.

    Parameters
    ----------
    s : str
    args : *Any
    kwargs : **Any

    Examples
    --------
    >>> sformat('The {} is {}', 'answer')
    'The answer is {}'

    >>> sformat('The answer to {question!r} is {answer:0.2f}', answer=42)
    'The answer to {question!r} is 42.00'

    >>> sformat('The {} to {} is {:0.{p}f}', 'answer', 'everything', p=4)
    'The answer to everything is {:0.4f}'

    Returns
    -------
    str
    """
    return SparseFormatter().format(s, *args, **kwargs)

I discovered the issues with the various implementations after writing some tests on how I wanted this method to behave. They’re below if anyone finds them insightful.

import pytest


def test_auto_indexing():
    # test basic arg auto-indexing
    assert sformat('{}{}', 4, 2) == '42'
    assert sformat('{}{} {}', 4, 2) == '42 {}'


def test_manual_indexing():
    # test basic arg indexing
    assert sformat('{0}{1} is not {1} or {0}', 4, 2) == '42 is not 2 or 4'
    assert sformat('{0}{1} is {3} {1} or {0}', 4, 2) == '42 is {3} 2 or 4'


def test_mixing_manualauto_fails():
    # test mixing manual and auto args raises
    with pytest.raises(ValueError):
        assert sformat('{!r} is {0}{1}', 4, 2)


def test_kwargs():
    # test basic kwarg
    assert sformat('{base}{n}', base=4, n=2) == '42'
    assert sformat('{base}{n}', base=4, n=2, extra='foo') == '42'
    assert sformat('{base}{n} {key}', base=4, n=2) == '42 {key}'


def test_args_and_kwargs():
    # test mixing args/kwargs with leftovers
    assert sformat('{}{k} {v}', 4, k=2) == '42 {v}'

    # test mixing with leftovers
    r = sformat('{}{} is the {k} to {!r}', 4, 2, k='answer')
    assert r == '42 is the answer to {!r}'


def test_coercion():
    # test coercion is preserved for skipped elements
    assert sformat('{!r} {k!r}', '42') == "'42' {k!r}"


def test_nesting():
    # test nesting works with or with out parent keys
    assert sformat('{k:>{size}}', k=42, size=3) == ' 42'
    assert sformat('{k:>{size}}', size=3) == '{k:>3}'


@pytest.mark.parametrize(
    ('s', 'expected'),
    [
        ('{a} {b}', '1 2.0'),
        ('{z} {y}', '{z} {y}'),
        ('{a} {a:2d} {a:04d} {y:2d} {z:04d}', '1  1 0001 {y:2d} {z:04d}'),
        ('{a!s} {z!s} {d!r}', '1 {z!s} {\'k\': \'v\'}'),
        ('{a!s:>2s} {z!s:>2s}', ' 1 {z!s:>2s}'),
        ('{a!s:>{a}s} {z!s:>{z}s}', '1 {z!s:>{z}s}'),
        ('{a.imag} {z.y}', '0 {z.y}'),
        ('{e[0]:03d} {z[0]:03d}', '042 {z[0]:03d}'),
    ],
    ids=[
        'normal',
        'none',
        'formatting',
        'coercion',
        'formatting+coercion',
        'nesting',
        'getattr',
        'getitem',
    ]
)
def test_sformat(s, expected):
    # test a bunch of random stuff
    data = dict(
        a=1,
        b=2.0,
        c='3',
        d={'k': 'v'},
        e=[42],
    )
    assert expected == sformat(s, **data)

My suggestion would be the following (tested with Python3.6):

class Lazymap(object):
       def __init__(self, **kwargs):
           self.dict = kwargs

       def __getitem__(self, key):
           return self.dict.get(key, "".join(["{", key, "}"]))


s = '{foo} {bar}'

s.format_map(Lazymap(bar="FOO"))
# >>> '{foo} FOO'

s.format_map(Lazymap(bar="BAR"))
# >>> '{foo} BAR'

s.format_map(Lazymap(bar="BAR", foo="FOO", baz="BAZ"))
# >>> 'FOO BAR'

Update: An even more elegant way (subclassing dict and overloading __missing__(self, key)) is shown here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/17215533/333403

Assuming you won’t use the string until it’s completely filled out, you could do something like this class:

class IncrementalFormatting:
    def __init__(self, string):
        self._args = []
        self._kwargs = {}
        self._string = string

    def add(self, *args, **kwargs):
        self._args.extend(args)
        self._kwargs.update(kwargs)

    def get(self):
        return self._string.format(*self._args, **self._kwargs)

Example:

template = '#{a}:{}/{}?{c}'
message = IncrementalFormatting(template)
message.add('abc')
message.add('xyz', a=24)
message.add(c='lmno')
assert message.get() == '#24:abc/xyz?lmno'

There is one more way to achieve this i.e by using format and % to replace variables. For example:

>>> s = '{foo} %(bar)s'
>>> s = s.format(foo='my_foo')
>>> s
'my_foo %(bar)s'
>>> s % {'bar': 'my_bar'}
'my_foo my_bar'

A very ugly but the simplest solution for me is to just do:

tmpl = '{foo}, {bar}'
tmpl.replace('{bar}', 'BAR')
Out[3]: '{foo}, BAR'

This way you still can use tmpl as regular template and perform partial formatting only when needed. I find this problem too trivial to use a overkilling solution like Mohan Raj’s.

After testing the most promising solutions from here and there, I realized that none of them really met the following requirements:

1. strictly adhere to the syntax recognized by str.format_map() for the template;
2. being able to retain complex formatting, i.e. fully supporting the Format Mini-Language

So, I wrote my own solution, which satisfies the above requirements. (EDIT: now the version by @SvenMarnach — as reported in this answer — seems to handle the corner cases I needed).

Basically, I ended up parsing the template string, finding matching nested {.*?} groups (using a find_all() helper function) and building the formatted string progressively and directly using str.format_map() while catching any potential KeyError.

def find_all(
        text,
        pattern,
        overlap=False):
    """
    Find all occurrencies of the pattern in the text.

    Args:
        text (str|bytes|bytearray): The input text.
        pattern (str|bytes|bytearray): The pattern to find.
        overlap (bool): Detect overlapping patterns.

    Yields:
        position (int): The position of the next finding.
    """
    len_text = len(text)
    offset = 1 if overlap else (len(pattern) or 1)
    i = 0
    while i < len_text:
        i = text.find(pattern, i)
        if i >= 0:
            yield i
            i += offset
        else:
            break

def matching_delimiters(
        text,
        l_delim,
        r_delim,
        including=True):
    """
    Find matching delimiters in a sequence.

    The delimiters are matched according to nesting level.

    Args:
        text (str|bytes|bytearray): The input text.
        l_delim (str|bytes|bytearray): The left delimiter.
        r_delim (str|bytes|bytearray): The right delimiter.
        including (bool): Include delimeters.

    yields:
        result (tuple[int]): The matching delimiters.
    """
    l_offset = len(l_delim) if including else 0
    r_offset = len(r_delim) if including else 0
    stack = []

    l_tokens = set(find_all(text, l_delim))
    r_tokens = set(find_all(text, r_delim))
    positions = l_tokens.union(r_tokens)
    for pos in sorted(positions):
        if pos in l_tokens:
            stack.append(pos + 1)
        elif pos in r_tokens:
            if len(stack) > 0:
                prev = stack.pop()
                yield (prev - l_offset, pos + r_offset, len(stack))
            else:
                raise ValueError(
                    'Found `{}` unmatched right token(s) `{}` (position: {}).'
                        .format(len(r_tokens) - len(l_tokens), r_delim, pos))
    if len(stack) > 0:
        raise ValueError(
            'Found `{}` unmatched left token(s) `{}` (position: {}).'
                .format(
                len(l_tokens) - len(r_tokens), l_delim, stack.pop() - 1))

def safe_format_map(
        text,
        source):
    """
    Perform safe string formatting from a mapping source.

    If a value is missing from source, this is simply ignored, and no
    `KeyError` is raised.

    Args:
        text (str): Text to format.
        source (Mapping|None): The mapping to use as source.
            If None, uses caller's `vars()`.

    Returns:
        result (str): The formatted text.
    """
    stack = []
    for i, j, depth in matching_delimiters(text, '{', '}'):
        if depth == 0:
            try:
                replacing = text[i:j].format_map(source)
            except KeyError:
                pass
            else:
                stack.append((i, j, replacing))
    result = ''
    i, j = len(text), 0
    while len(stack) > 0:
        last_i = i
        i, j, replacing = stack.pop()
        result = replacing + text[j:last_i] + result
    if i > 0:
        result = text[0:i] + result
    return result

(This code is also available in FlyingCircus — DISCLAIMER: I am the main author of it.)

The usage for this code would be:

print(safe_format_map('{a} {b} {c}', dict(a=-A-)))
# -A- {b} {c}

Let’s compare this to the my favourite solution (by @SvenMarnach who kindly shared his code here and there):

import string


class FormatPlaceholder:
    def __init__(self, key):
        self.key = key
    def __format__(self, spec):
        result = self.key
        if spec:
            result += ":" + spec
        return "{" + result + "}"
    def __getitem__(self, index):
        self.key = "{}[{}]".format(self.key, index)
        return self
    def __getattr__(self, attr):
        self.key = "{}.{}".format(self.key, attr)
        return self


class FormatDict(dict):
    def __missing__(self, key):
        return FormatPlaceholder(key)


def safe_format_alt(text, source):
    formatter = string.Formatter()
    return formatter.vformat(text, (), FormatDict(source))

Here are a couple of tests:

test_texts = (
    '{b} {f}',  # simple nothing useful in source
    '{a} {b}',  # simple
    '{a} {b} {c:5d}',  # formatting
    '{a} {b} {c!s}',  # coercion
    '{a} {b} {c!s:>{a}s}',  # formatting and coercion
    '{a} {b} {c:0{a}d}',  # nesting
    '{a} {b} {d[x]}',  # dicts (existing in source)
    '{a} {b} {e.index}',  # class (existing in source)
    '{a} {b} {f[g]}',  # dict (not existing in source)
    '{a} {b} {f.values}',  # class (not existing in source)

)
source = dict(a=4, c=101, d=dict(x='FOO'), e=[])

and the code to make it running:

funcs = safe_format_map, safe_format_alt

n = 18
for text in test_texts:
    full_source = {**dict(b='---', f=dict(g='Oh yes!')), **source}
    print('{:>{n}s} :   OK   : '.format('str.format_map', n=n) + text.format_map(full_source))
    for func in funcs:
        try:
            print(f'{func.__name__:>{n}s} :   OK   : ' + func(text, source))
        except:
            print(f'{func.__name__:>{n}s} : FAILED : {text}')

resulting in:

    str.format_map :   OK   : --- {'g': 'Oh yes!'}
   safe_format_map :   OK   : {b} {f}
   safe_format_alt :   OK   : {b} {f}
    str.format_map :   OK   : 4 ---
   safe_format_map :   OK   : 4 {b}
   safe_format_alt :   OK   : 4 {b}
    str.format_map :   OK   : 4 ---   101
   safe_format_map :   OK   : 4 {b}   101
   safe_format_alt :   OK   : 4 {b}   101
    str.format_map :   OK   : 4 --- 101
   safe_format_map :   OK   : 4 {b} 101
   safe_format_alt :   OK   : 4 {b} 101
    str.format_map :   OK   : 4 ---  101
   safe_format_map :   OK   : 4 {b}  101
   safe_format_alt :   OK   : 4 {b}  101
    str.format_map :   OK   : 4 --- 0101
   safe_format_map :   OK   : 4 {b} 0101
   safe_format_alt :   OK   : 4 {b} 0101
    str.format_map :   OK   : 4 --- FOO
   safe_format_map :   OK   : 4 {b} FOO
   safe_format_alt :   OK   : 4 {b} FOO
    str.format_map :   OK   : 4 --- <built-in method index of list object at 0x7f7a485666c8>
   safe_format_map :   OK   : 4 {b} <built-in method index of list object at 0x7f7a485666c8>
   safe_format_alt :   OK   : 4 {b} <built-in method index of list object at 0x7f7a485666c8>
    str.format_map :   OK   : 4 --- Oh yes!
   safe_format_map :   OK   : 4 {b} {f[g]}
   safe_format_alt :   OK   : 4 {b} {f[g]}
    str.format_map :   OK   : 4 --- <built-in method values of dict object at 0x7f7a485da090>
   safe_format_map :   OK   : 4 {b} {f.values}
   safe_format_alt :   OK   : 4 {b} {f.values}

as you can see, the updated version now seems to handle well the corner cases where the earlier version used to fail.

Timewise, they are within approx. 50% of each other, depending on the actual text to format (and likely the actual source), but safe_format_map() seems to have an edge in most of the tests I performed (whatever they mean, of course):

for text in test_texts:
    print(f'  {text}')
    %timeit safe_format(text * 1000, source)
    %timeit safe_format_alt(text * 1000, source)

  {b} {f}
3.93 ms ± 153 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100 loops each)
6.35 ms ± 51.9 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100 loops each)
  {a} {b}
4.37 ms ± 57.1 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100 loops each)
5.2 ms ± 159 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100 loops each)
  {a} {b} {c:5d}
7.15 ms ± 91.9 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100 loops each)
7.76 ms ± 69.5 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100 loops each)
  {a} {b} {c!s}
7.04 ms ± 138 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100 loops each)
7.56 ms ± 161 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100 loops each)
  {a} {b} {c!s:>{a}s}
8.91 ms ± 113 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100 loops each)
10.5 ms ± 181 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100 loops each)
  {a} {b} {c:0{a}d}
8.84 ms ± 147 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100 loops each)
10.2 ms ± 202 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100 loops each)
  {a} {b} {d[x]}
7.01 ms ± 197 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100 loops each)
7.35 ms ± 106 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100 loops each)
  {a} {b} {e.index}
11 ms ± 68.8 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100 loops each)
8.78 ms ± 405 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100 loops each)
  {a} {b} {f[g]}
6.55 ms ± 88.6 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100 loops each)
9.12 ms ± 159 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100 loops each)
  {a} {b} {f.values}
6.61 ms ± 55.9 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100 loops each)
9.92 ms ± 98.8 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100 loops each)

If you’d like to unpack a dictionary to pass arguments to format, as in this related question, you could use the following method.

First assume the string s is the same as in this question:

s = '{foo} {bar}'

and the values are given by the following dictionary:

replacements = {'foo': 'FOO'}

Clearly this won’t work:

s.format(**replacements)
#---------------------------------------------------------------------------
#KeyError                                  Traceback (most recent call last)
#<ipython-input-29-ef5e51de79bf> in <module>()
#----> 1 s.format(**replacements)
#
#KeyError: 'bar'

However, you could first get a set of all of the named arguments from s and create a dictionary that maps the argument to itself wrapped in curly braces:

from string import Formatter
args = {x[1]:'{'+x[1]+'}' for x in Formatter().parse(s)}
print(args)
#{'foo': '{foo}', 'bar': '{bar}'}

Now use the args dictionary to fill in the missing keys in replacements. For python 3.5+, you can do this in a single expression:

new_s = s.format(**{**args, **replacements}}
print(new_s)
#'FOO {bar}'

For older versions of python, you could call update:

args.update(replacements)
print(s.format(**args))
#'FOO {bar}'

I like @sven-marnach answer. My answer is simply an extended version of it. It allows non-keyword formatting and ignores extra keys. Here are examples of usage (the name of a function is a reference to python 3.6 f-string formatting):

# partial string substitution by keyword
>>> f('{foo} {bar}', foo="FOO")
'FOO {bar}'

# partial string substitution by argument
>>> f('{} {bar}', 1)
'1 {bar}'

>>> f('{foo} {}', 1)
'{foo} 1'

# partial string substitution with arguments and keyword mixed
>>> f('{foo} {} {bar} {}', '|', bar='BAR')
'{foo} | BAR {}'

# partial string substitution with extra keyword
>>> f('{foo} {bar}', foo="FOO", bro="BRO")
'FOO {bar}'

# you can simply 'pour out' your dictionary to format function
>>> kwargs = {'foo': 'FOO', 'bro': 'BRO'}
>>> f('{foo} {bar}', **kwargs)
'FOO {bar}'

And here is my code:

from string import Formatter


class FormatTuple(tuple):
    def __getitem__(self, key):
        if key + 1 > len(self):
            return "{}"
        return tuple.__getitem__(self, key)


class FormatDict(dict):
    def __missing__(self, key):
        return "{" + key + "}"


def f(string, *args, **kwargs):
    """
    String safe substitute format method.
    If you pass extra keys they will be ignored.
    If you pass incomplete substitute map, missing keys will be left unchanged.
    :param string:
    :param kwargs:
    :return:

    >>> f('{foo} {bar}', foo="FOO")
    'FOO {bar}'
    >>> f('{} {bar}', 1)
    '1 {bar}'
    >>> f('{foo} {}', 1)
    '{foo} 1'
    >>> f('{foo} {} {bar} {}', '|', bar='BAR')
    '{foo} | BAR {}'
    >>> f('{foo} {bar}', foo="FOO", bro="BRO")
    'FOO {bar}'
    """
    formatter = Formatter()
    args_mapping = FormatTuple(args)
    mapping = FormatDict(kwargs)
    return formatter.vformat(string, args_mapping, mapping)

If you’re doing a lot of templating and finding Python’s built in string templating functionality to be insufficient or clunky, look at Jinja2.

From the docs:

Jinja is a modern and designer-friendly templating language for Python, modelled after Django’s templates.

Reading @Sam Bourne comment, I modified @SvenMarnach’s code to work properly with coercion (like {a!s:>2s}) without writing a custom parser. The basic idea is not to convert to strings but concatenate missing keys with coercion tags.

import string
class MissingKey(object):
    def __init__(self, key):
        self.key = key

    def __str__(self):  # Supports {key!s}
        return MissingKeyStr("".join([self.key, "!s"]))

    def __repr__(self):  # Supports {key!r}
        return MissingKeyStr("".join([self.key, "!r"]))

    def __format__(self, spec): # Supports {key:spec}
        if spec:
            return "".join(["{", self.key, ":", spec, "}"])
        return "".join(["{", self.key, "}"])

    def __getitem__(self, i): # Supports {key[i]}
        return MissingKey("".join([self.key, "[", str(i), "]"]))

    def __getattr__(self, name): # Supports {key.name}
        return MissingKey("".join([self.key, ".", name]))


class MissingKeyStr(MissingKey, str):
    def __init__(self, key):
        if isinstance(key, MissingKey):
            self.key = "".join([key.key, "!s"])
        else:
            self.key = key

class SafeFormatter(string.Formatter):
    def __init__(self, default=lambda k: MissingKey(k)):
        self.default=default

    def get_value(self, key, args, kwds):
        if isinstance(key, str):
            return kwds.get(key, self.default(key))
        else:
            return super().get_value(key, args, kwds)

Use (for example) like this

SafeFormatter().format("{a:<5} {b:<10}", a=10)

The following tests (inspired by tests from @norok2) check the output for the traditional format_map and a safe_format_map based on the class above in two cases: providing correct keywords or without them.

def safe_format_map(text, source):
    return SafeFormatter().format(text, **source)

test_texts = (
    '{a} ',             # simple nothing useful in source
    '{a:5d}',       # formatting
    '{a!s}',        # coercion
    '{a!s:>{a}s}',  # formatting and coercion
    '{a:0{a}d}',    # nesting
    '{d[x]}',       # indexing
    '{d.values}',   # member
)

source = dict(a=10,d=dict(x='FOO'))
funcs = [safe_format_map,
         str.format_map
         #safe_format_alt  # Version based on parsing (See @norok2)
         ]
n = 18
for text in test_texts:
    # full_source = {**dict(b='---', f=dict(g='Oh yes!')), **source}
    # print('{:>{n}s} :   OK   : '.format('str.format_map', n=n) + text.format_map(full_source))
    print("Testing:", text)
    for func in funcs:
        try:
            print(f'{func.__name__:>{n}s} : OK\t\t\t: ' + func(text, dict()))
        except:
            print(f'{func.__name__:>{n}s} : FAILED')

        try:
            print(f'{func.__name__:>{n}s} : OK\t\t\t: ' + func(text, source))
        except:
            print(f'{func.__name__:>{n}s} : FAILED')

Which outputs

Testing: {a} 
   safe_format_map : OK         : {a} 
   safe_format_map : OK         : 10 
        format_map : FAILED
        format_map : OK         : 10 
Testing: {a:5d}
   safe_format_map : OK         : {a:5d}
   safe_format_map : OK         :    10
        format_map : FAILED
        format_map : OK         :    10
Testing: {a!s}
   safe_format_map : OK         : {a!s}
   safe_format_map : OK         : 10
        format_map : FAILED
        format_map : OK         : 10
Testing: {a!s:>{a}s}
   safe_format_map : OK         : {a!s:>{a}s}
   safe_format_map : OK         :         10
        format_map : FAILED
        format_map : OK         :         10
Testing: {a:0{a}d}
   safe_format_map : OK         : {a:0{a}d}
   safe_format_map : OK         : 0000000010
        format_map : FAILED
        format_map : OK         : 0000000010
Testing: {d[x]}
   safe_format_map : OK         : {d[x]}
   safe_format_map : OK         : FOO
        format_map : FAILED
        format_map : OK         : FOO
Testing: {d.values}
   safe_format_map : OK         : {d.values}
   safe_format_map : OK         : <built-in method values of dict object at 0x7fe61e230af8>
        format_map : FAILED
        format_map : OK         : <built-in method values of dict object at 0x7fe61e230af8>

You could wrap it in a function that takes default arguments:

def print_foo_bar(foo='', bar=''):
    s = '{foo} {bar}'
    return s.format(foo=foo, bar=bar)

print_foo_bar(bar='BAR') # ' BAR'