Convert a polars dataframe to a Python dictionary

to_dict

Dictionaries are an important data structure in Python. They’re used everywhere from storing data retrieved from web requests to keeping values in a lookup table by key. It’s no wonder Polars makes it easy to convert your dataframe to a Python dictionary.

Below is a dataframe of students and their characteristics:

shape: (5, 2)

Student	Character
str	str
"Spencer"	"Bossy"
"Emily"	"Sporty"
"Hannah"	"Artistic"
"Aria"	"Word smith"
"Mona"	"Manipulative"

Convert to dictionary

To convert a Polars dataframe to a dictionary, use the to_dict method like this:

(df
 .to_dict(as_series=False)
 )

{'Student': ['Spencer', 'Emily', 'Hannah', 'Aria', 'Mona'],
 'Character': ['Bossy', 'Sporty', 'Artistic', 'Word smith', 'Manipulative']}

When working with APIs, the data is usually in JSON format, which is the same structure as a Python dictionary. You can read your data with Polars, convert it to a dictionary, and then send it via the API. This way, you take advantage of Polars’ faster processing.

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