How to merge dictionaries of dictionaries?

Here's an easy way to do it using generators:

def mergedicts(dict1, dict2):
    for k in set(dict1.keys()).union(dict2.keys()):
        if k in dict1 and k in dict2:
            if isinstance(dict1[k], dict) and isinstance(dict2[k], dict):
                yield (k, dict(mergedicts(dict1[k], dict2[k])))
            else:
                # If one of the values is not a dict, you can't continue merging it.
                # Value from second dict overrides one in first and we move on.
                yield (k, dict2[k])
                # Alternatively, replace this with exception raiser to alert you of value conflicts
        elif k in dict1:
            yield (k, dict1[k])
        else:
            yield (k, dict2[k])

dict1 = {1:{"a":"A"},2:{"b":"B"}}
dict2 = {2:{"c":"C"},3:{"d":"D"}}

print dict(mergedicts(dict1,dict2))

This prints:

{1: {'a': 'A'}, 2: {'c': 'C', 'b': 'B'}, 3: {'d': 'D'}}

This is actually quite tricky - particularly if you want a useful error message when things are inconsistent, while correctly accepting duplicate but consistent entries (something no other answer here does..)

Assuming you don't have huge numbers of entries, a recursive function is easiest:

def merge(a, b, path=None):
    "merges b into a"
    if path is None: path = []
    for key in b:
        if key in a:
            if isinstance(a[key], dict) and isinstance(b[key], dict):
                merge(a[key], b[key], path + [str(key)])
            elif a[key] == b[key]:
                pass # same leaf value
            else:
                raise Exception('Conflict at %s' % '.'.join(path + [str(key)]))
        else:
            a[key] = b[key]
    return a

# works
print(merge({1:{"a":"A"},2:{"b":"B"}}, {2:{"c":"C"},3:{"d":"D"}}))
# has conflict
merge({1:{"a":"A"},2:{"b":"B"}}, {1:{"a":"A"},2:{"b":"C"}})

note that this mutates a - the contents of b are added to a (which is also returned). If you want to keep a you could call it like merge(dict(a), b).

agf pointed out (below) that you may have more than two dicts, in which case you can use:

reduce(merge, [dict1, dict2, dict3...])

where everything will be added to dict1.

Note: I edited my initial answer to mutate the first argument; that makes the "reduce" easier to explain

PS: In python 3, you will also need from functools import reduce

You could try mergedeep.

---

Installation

$ pip3 install mergedeep

Usage

from mergedeep import merge

a = {"keyA": 1}
b = {"keyB": {"sub1": 10}}
c = {"keyB": {"sub2": 20}}

merge(a, b, c) 

print(a)
# {"keyA": 1, "keyB": {"sub1": 10, "sub2": 20}}

For a full list of options, check out the docs!