How to print out a dictionary nicely in Python?

I like the pprint module (Pretty Print) included in Python. It can be used to either print the object, or format a nice string version of it.

import pprint

# Prints the nicely formatted dictionary
pprint.pprint(dictionary)

# Sets 'pretty_dict_str' to the formatted string value
pretty_dict_str = pprint.pformat(dictionary)

But it sounds like you are printing out an inventory, which users will likely want shown as something more like the following:

def print_inventory(dct):
    print("Items held:")
    for item, amount in dct.items():  # dct.iteritems() in Python 2
        print("{} ({})".format(item, amount))

inventory = {
    "shovels": 3,
    "sticks": 2,
    "dogs": 1,
}

print_inventory(inventory)

which prints:

Items held:
shovels (3)
sticks (2)
dogs (1)

Here's the one-liner I'd use. (Edit: works for things that aren't JSON-serializable too)

print("\n".join("{}\t{}".format(k, v) for k, v in dictionary.items()))

Explanation: This iterates through the keys and values of the dictionary, creating a formatted string like key + tab + value for each. And "\n".join(... puts newlines between all those strings, forming a new string.

Example:

>>> dictionary = {1: 2, 4: 5, "foo": "bar"}
>>> print("\n".join("{}\t{}".format(k, v) for k, v in dictionary.items()))
1   2
4   5
foo bar
>>>

Edit 2: Here's a sorted version.

"\n".join("{}\t{}".format(k, v) for k, v in sorted(dictionary.items(), key=lambda t: str(t[0])))

I would suggest to use beeprint instead of pprint.

Examples:

pprint

{'entities': {'hashtags': [],
              'urls': [{'display_url': 'github.com/panyanyany/beeprint',
                        'indices': [107, 126],
                        'url': 'https://github.com/panyanyany/beeprint'}],
              'user_mentions': []}}

beeprint

{
  'entities': {
    'hashtags': [],
    'urls': [
      {
        'display_url': 'github.com/panyanyany/beeprint',
        'indices': [107, 126],
        'url': 'https://github.com/panyanyany/beeprint'}],
      },
    ],
    'user_mentions': [],
  },
}

My favorite way:

import json
print(json.dumps(dictionary, indent=4, sort_keys=True))