{"id":20587,"date":"2020-07-31T00:42:52","date_gmt":"2020-07-31T07:42:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/careerkarma.com\/blog\/?p=20587"},"modified":"2023-12-01T03:57:12","modified_gmt":"2023-12-01T11:57:12","slug":"python-typeerror-string-indices-must-be-integers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/careerkarma.com\/blog\/python-typeerror-string-indices-must-be-integers\/","title":{"rendered":"Python typeerror: string indices must be integers Solution"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In Python, iterable objects are indexed using numbers<\/a>. When you try to access an iterable object using a string value, an error will be returned. This error will look something like \u201cTypeError: string indices must be integers\u201d.
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In this guide, we\u2019re going to discuss what this error means and why it is raised. We\u2019ll walk through an example code snippet with this error and a solution to help you gain further context into how you can solve this type of error.
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Let\u2019s get started!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Problem: typeerror: string indices must be integers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We have a TypeError on our hands. That means that we\u2019re trying to perform an operation on a value whose type is not compatible with that operation. Let\u2019s look at our error message:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

typeerror: string indices must be integers<\/pre><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Like many Python error messages, this one tells us exactly what mistake we have made. This error indicates that we are trying to access a value from an iterable using a string<\/a> index rather than an integer index.
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Iterables, like strings and dictionaries<\/a>, are indexed starting from the number 0. Consider the following list:
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keyboard = ["Apex Pro", "Apple Magic Keyboard"];<\/pre><\/div>\n\n\n\n
This is a list of strings. To access the first item in this list, we need to reference it by its index value:
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print(keyboard[0])<\/pre><\/div>\n\n\n\n
This will return a keyboard name: \u201cApex Pro\u201d. We could not access this list item using a string. Otherwise, an error would be returned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An Example Scenario<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s create a dictionary called \u201csteel_series\u201d which contains information on a keyboard:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
steel_series = {\n\t"name": "Apex Pro",\n\t"manufacturer": "SteelSeries",\n\t"oled_display": True\n}<\/pre><\/div>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019re going to iterate over all the values in this dictionary and print them to the console.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
for k in steel_series:\n\tprint("Name: " + k["name"])\n\tprint("Manufacturer: " + k["manufacturer"])\n\tprint("OLED Display: " + str(k["oled_display"]))<\/pre><\/div>\n\n\n\n
This code uses a for loop<\/a> to iterate through every item in our \u201ckeyboard\u201d object. Now, let\u2019s try to run our code and see what happens:
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Traceback (most recent call last):\n  File "main.py", line 8, in <module>\n\tprint("Name: " + k["name"])\nTypeError: string indices must be integers<\/pre><\/div>\n\n\n\n
An error is present, as we expected. This error has been caused because we are trying to access values from our dictionary using string indices instead of integers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Solution<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The problem in our code is that we\u2019re iterating over each key in the \u201csteel_series\u201d dictionary.
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The value of \u201ck\u201d is always a key in the dictionary. It\u2019s not a record in our dictionary. Let\u2019s try to print out \u201ck\u201d in our dictionary:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
for k in steel_series:\n\tprint(k)<\/pre><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Our code returns:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
name\nmanufacturer\noled_display<\/pre><\/div>\n\n\n\n
We cannot use \u201ck\u201d to access values in our dictionary. k[\u201cname\u201d] is equal to the value of \u201cname\u201d inside \u201ck\u201d, which is \u201cname\u201d. This does not make sense to Python. You cannot access a value in a string using another string.
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To solve this problem, we should reference our dictionary instead of \u201ck\u201d. We can access items in our dictionary using a string. This is because dictionary keys can be strings.
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We don\u2019t need to use a for loop to print out each value:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
print("Name: " + steel_series["name"])\nprint("Manufacturer: " + steel_series["manufacturer"])\nprint("OLED Display: " + str(steel_series["oled_display"]))<\/pre><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s run our new code:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Name: Apex Pro\nManufacturer: SteelSeries\nOLED Display: True<\/pre><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Our code successfully prints out each value in our list. This is because we’re no longer trying to access our dictionary using the string value in an iterator<\/a> (\u201ck\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n