Prettify Your Data Structures With Pretty Print in Python

Dealing with data is essential for any Pythonista, but sometimes that data is just not very pretty. Computers don’t care about formatting, but without good formatting, humans may find something hard to read. The output isn’t pretty when you use print() on large dictionaries or long lists—it’s efficient, but not pretty.

The pprint module in Python is a utility module that you can use to print data structures in a readable, pretty way. It’s a part of the standard library that’s especially useful for debugging code dealing with API requests, large JSON files, and data in general.

By the end of this tutorial, you’ll:

Understand why the pprint module is necessary
Learn how to use pprint(), PrettyPrinter, and their parameters
Be able to create your own instance of PrettyPrinter
Save formatted string output instead of printing it
Print and recognize recursive data structures

Along the way, you’ll also see an HTTP request to a public API and JSON parsing in action.

Free Bonus: Click here to get a Python Cheat Sheet and learn the basics of Python 3, like working with data types, dictionaries, lists, and Python functions.

Understanding the Need for Python’s Pretty Print

The Python pprint module is helpful in many situations. It comes in handy when making API requests, dealing with JSON files, or handling complicated and nested data. You’ll probably find that using the normal print() function isn’t adequate to efficiently explore your data and debug your application. When you use print() with dictionaries and lists, the output doesn’t contain any newlines.

Before you start exploring pprint, you’ll first use urllib to make a request to get some data. You’ll make a request to {JSON} Placeholder for some mock user information. The first thing to do is to make the HTTP GET request and put the response into a dictionary:

Python
      
        
      
    
>>> from urllib import request
>>> response = request.urlopen("https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/users")
>>> json_response = response.read()
>>> import json
>>> users = json.loads(json_response)

Here, you make a basic GET request and then parse the response into a dictionary with json.loads(). With the dictionary now in a variable, a common next step is to print the contents with print():

Python
      
>>> print(users)
[{'id': 1, 'name': 'Leanne Graham', 'username': 'Bret', 'email': 'Sincere@april.biz', 'address': {'street': 'Kulas Light', 'suite': 'Apt. 556', 'city': 'Gwenborough', 'zipcode': '92998-3874', 'geo': {'lat': '-37.3159', 'lng': '81.1496'}}, 'phone': '1-770-736-8031 x56442', 'website': 'hildegard.org', 'company': {'name': 'Romaguera-Crona', 'catchPhrase': 'Multi-layered client-server neural-net', 'bs': 'harness real-time e-markets'}}, {'id': 2, 'name': 'Ervin Howell', 'username': 'Antonette', 'email': 'Shanna@melissa.tv', 'address': {'street': 'Victor Plains', 'suite': 'Suite 879', 'city': 'Wisokyburgh', 'zipcode': '90566-7771', 'geo': {'lat': '-43.9509', 'lng': '-34.4618'}}, 'phone': '010-692-6593 x09125', 'website': 'anastasia.net', 'company': {'name': 'Deckow-Crist', 'catchPhrase': 'Proactive didactic contingency', 'bs': 'synergize scalable supply-chains'}}, {'id': 3, 'name': 'Clementine Bauch', 'username': 'Samantha', 'email': 'Nathan@yesenia.net', 'address': {'street': 'Douglas Extension', 'suite': 'Suite 847', 'city': 'McKenziehaven', 'zipcode': '59590-4157', 'geo': {'lat': '-68.6102', 'lng': '-47.0653'}}, 'phone': '1-463-123-4447', 'website': 'ramiro.info', 'company': {'name': 'Romaguera-Jacobson', 'catchPhrase': 'Face to face bifurcated interface', 'bs': 'e-enable strategic applications'}}, {'id': 4, 'name': 'Patricia Lebsack', 'username': 'Karianne', 'email': 'Julianne.OConner@kory.org', 'address': {'street': 'Hoeger Mall', 'suite': 'Apt. 692', 'city': 'South Elvis', 'zipcode': '53919-4257', 'geo': {'lat': '29.4572', 'lng': '-164.2990'}}, 'phone': '493-170-9623 x156', 'website': 'kale.biz', 'company': {'name': 'Robel-Corkery', 'catchPhrase': 'Multi-tiered zero tolerance productivity', 'bs': 'transition cutting-edge web services'}}, {'id': 5, 'name': 'Chelsey Dietrich', 'username': 'Kamren', 'email': 'Lucio_Hettinger@annie.ca', 'address': {'street': 'Skiles Walks', 'suite': 'Suite 351', 'city': 'Roscoeview', 'zipcode': '33263', 'geo': {'lat': '-31.8129', 'lng': '62.5342'}}, 'phone': '(254)954-1289', 'website': 'demarco.info', 'company': {'name': 'Keebler LLC', 'catchPhrase': 'User-centric fault-tolerant solution', 'bs': 'revolutionize end-to-end systems'}}, {'id': 6, 'name': 'Mrs. Dennis Schulist', 'username': 'Leopoldo_Corkery', 'email': 'Karley_Dach@jasper.info', 'address': {'street': 'Norberto Crossing', 'suite': 'Apt. 950', 'city': 'South Christy', 'zipcode': '23505-1337', 'geo': {'lat': '-71.4197', 'lng': '71.7478'}}, 'phone': '1-477-935-8478 x6430', 'website': 'ola.org', 'company': {'name': 'Considine-Lockman', 'catchPhrase': 'Synchronised bottom-line interface', 'bs': 'e-enable innovative applications'}}, {'id': 7, 'name': 'Kurtis Weissnat', 'username': 'Elwyn.Skiles', 'email': 'Telly.Hoeger@billy.biz', 'address': {'street': 'Rex Trail', 'suite': 'Suite 280', 'city': 'Howemouth', 'zipcode': '58804-1099', 'geo': {'lat': '24.8918', 'lng': '21.8984'}}, 'phone': '210.067.6132', 'website': 'elvis.io', 'company': {'name': 'Johns Group', 'catchPhrase': 'Configurable multimedia task-force', 'bs': 'generate enterprise e-tailers'}}, {'id': 8, 'name': 'Nicholas Runolfsdottir V', 'username': 'Maxime_Nienow', 'email': 'Sherwood@rosamond.me', 'address': {'street': 'Ellsworth Summit', 'suite': 'Suite 729', 'city': 'Aliyaview', 'zipcode': '45169', 'geo': {'lat': '-14.3990', 'lng': '-120.7677'}}, 'phone': '586.493.6943 x140', 'website': 'jacynthe.com', 'company': {'name': 'Abernathy Group', 'catchPhrase': 'Implemented secondary concept', 'bs': 'e-enable extensible e-tailers'}}, {'id': 9, 'name': 'Glenna Reichert', 'username': 'Delphine', 'email': 'Chaim_McDermott@dana.io', 'address': {'street': 'Dayna Park', 'suite': 'Suite 449', 'city': 'Bartholomebury', 'zipcode': '76495-3109', 'geo': {'lat': '24.6463', 'lng': '-168.8889'}}, 'phone': '(775)976-6794 x41206', 'website': 'conrad.com', 'company': {'name': 'Yost and Sons', 'catchPhrase': 'Switchable contextually-based project', 'bs': 'aggregate real-time technologies'}}, {'id': 10, 'name': 'Clementina DuBuque', 'username': 'Moriah.Stanton', 'email': 'Rey.Padberg@karina.biz', 'address': {'street': 'Kattie Turnpike', 'suite': 'Suite 198', 'city': 'Lebsackbury', 'zipcode': '31428-2261', 'geo': {'lat': '-38.2386', 'lng': '57.2232'}}, 'phone': '024-648-3804', 'website': 'ambrose.net', 'company': {'name': 'Hoeger LLC', 'catchPhrase': 'Centralized empowering task-force', 'bs': 'target end-to-end models'}}]

Oh dear! One huge line with no newlines. Depending on your console settings, this might appear as one very long line. Alternatively, your console output might have its word-wrapping mode on, which is the most common situation. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make the output much friendlier!

If you look at the first and last characters, you can see that this appears to be a list. You might be tempted to start writing a loop to print the items:

Python
      
    
for user in users:
    print(user)

This for loop would print each object on a separate line, but even then, each object takes up way more space than can fit on a single line. Printing in this way does make things a bit better, but it’s by no means ideal. The above example is a relatively simple data structure, but what would you do with a deeply nested dictionary 100 times the size?

Sure, you could write a function that uses recursion to find a way to print everything. Unfortunately, you’ll likely run into some edge cases where this won’t work. You might even find yourself writing a whole module of functions just to get to grips with the structure of the data!

Enter the pprint module!

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Working With `pprint`

pprint is a Python module made to print data structures in a pretty way. It has long been part of the Python standard library, so installing it separately isn’t necessary. All you need to do is to import its pprint() function:

Python
      
>>> from pprint import pprint

Then, instead of going with the normal print(users) approach as you did in the example above, you can call your new favorite function to make the output pretty:

Python
      
>>> pprint(users)

This function prints users—but in a new-and-improved pretty way:

Python
      
        
      
    
>>> pprint(users)
[{'address': {'city': 'Gwenborough',
              'geo': {'lat': '-37.3159', 'lng': '81.1496'},
              'street': 'Kulas Light',
              'suite': 'Apt. 556',
              'zipcode': '92998-3874'},
  'company': {'bs': 'harness real-time e-markets',
              'catchPhrase': 'Multi-layered client-server neural-net',
              'name': 'Romaguera-Crona'},
  'email': 'Sincere@april.biz',
  'id': 1,
  'name': 'Leanne Graham',
  'phone': '1-770-736-8031 x56442',
  'username': 'Bret',
  'website': 'hildegard.org'},
 {'address': {'city': 'Wisokyburgh',
              'geo': {'lat': '-43.9509', 'lng': '-34.4618'},
              'street': 'Victor Plains',
              'suite': 'Suite 879',
              'zipcode': '90566-7771'},
  'company': {'bs': 'synergize scalable supply-chains',
              'catchPhrase': 'Proactive didactic contingency',
              'name': 'Deckow-Crist'},
  'email': 'Shanna@melissa.tv',
  'id': 2,
  'name': 'Ervin Howell',
  'phone': '010-692-6593 x09125',
  'username': 'Antonette',
  'website': 'anastasia.net'},

 ...

 {'address': {'city': 'Lebsackbury',
              'geo': {'lat': '-38.2386', 'lng': '57.2232'},
              'street': 'Kattie Turnpike',
              'suite': 'Suite 198',
              'zipcode': '31428-2261'},
  'company': {'bs': 'target end-to-end models',
              'catchPhrase': 'Centralized empowering task-force',
              'name': 'Hoeger LLC'},
  'email': 'Rey.Padberg@karina.biz',
  'id': 10,
  'name': 'Clementina DuBuque',
  'phone': '024-648-3804',
  'username': 'Moriah.Stanton',
  'website': 'ambrose.net'}]

How pretty! The keys of the dictionaries are even visually indented! This output makes it so much more straightforward to scan and visually analyze data structures.

Note: The output you’ll see will be longer if you run the code yourself. This code block truncates the output for readability.

If you’re a fan of typing as little as possible, then you’ll be pleased to know that pprint() has an alias, pp():

Python
      
>>> from pprint import pp
>>> pp(users)

pp() is just a wrapper around pprint(), and it’ll behave exactly the same way.

Note: Python has included this alias since version 3.8.0 alpha 2.

However, even the default output may be too much information to scan at first. Maybe all you really want is to verify that you’re dealing with a list of plain objects. For that, you’ll want to tweak the output a little.

For these situations, there are various parameters you can pass to pprint() to make even the tersest data structures pretty.

Exploring Optional Parameters of `pprint()`

In this section, you’ll learn about all the parameters available for pprint(). There are seven parameters that you can use to configure your Pythonic pretty printer. You don’t need to use them all, and some will be more useful than others. The one you’ll find most valuable will probably be depth.

Summarizing Your Data: `depth`

One of the handiest parameters to play around with is depth. The following Python command will only print the full contents of users if the data structure is at or lower than the specified depth—all while keeping things pretty, of course. The contents of deeper data structures are replaced with three dots:

Python
      
>>> pprint(users, depth=1)
[{...}, {...}, {...}, {...}, {...}, {...}, {...}, {...}, {...}, {...}]

Now you can immediately see that this is indeed a list of dictionaries. To explore the data structure further, you can increase the depth by one level, which will print all the top-level keys of the dictionaries in users:

Python
      
        
      
    
>>> pprint(users, depth=2)
[{'address': {...},
  'company': {...},
  'email': 'Sincere@april.biz',
  'id': 1,
  'name': 'Leanne Graham',
  'phone': '1-770-736-8031 x56442',
  'username': 'Bret',
  'website': 'hildegard.org'},
 {'address': {...},
  'company': {...},
  'email': 'Shanna@melissa.tv',
  'id': 2,
  'name': 'Ervin Howell',
  'phone': '010-692-6593 x09125',
  'username': 'Antonette',
  'website': 'anastasia.net'},

  ...

 {'address': {...},
  'company': {...},
  'email': 'Rey.Padberg@karina.biz',
  'id': 10,
  'name': 'Clementina DuBuque',
  'phone': '024-648-3804',
  'username': 'Moriah.Stanton',
  'website': 'ambrose.net'}]

Now you can quickly check whether all the dictionaries share their top-level keys. This is a valuable observation to make, especially if you’re tasked with developing an application that consumes data like this.

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Giving Your Data Space: `indent`

The indent parameter controls how indented each level of the pretty-printed representation will be in the output. The default indent is just 1, which translates to one space character:

Python
      
        
      
    
>>> pprint(users[0], depth=1)
{'address': {...},
 'company': {...},
 'email': 'Sincere@april.biz',
 'id': 1,
 'name': 'Leanne Graham',
 'phone': '1-770-736-8031 x56442',
 'username': 'Bret',
 'website': 'hildegard.org'}

>>> pprint(users[0], depth=1, indent=4)
{   'address': {...},
    'company': {...},
    'email': 'Sincere@april.biz',
    'id': 1,
    'name': 'Leanne Graham',
    'phone': '1-770-736-8031 x56442',
    'username': 'Bret',
    'website': 'hildegard.org'}

The most important part of the indenting behavior of pprint() is keeping all the keys aligned visually. How much indentation is applied depends on both the indent parameter and where the key is.

Since there’s no nesting in the examples above, the amount of indentation is based completely on the indent parameter. In both examples, note how the opening curly bracket ({) is counted as a unit of indentation for the first key. In the first example, the opening single quote for the first key comes right after { without any spaces in between because the indent is set to 1.

When there is nesting, however, the indentation is applied to the first element in-line, and pprint() then keeps all following elements aligned with the first one. So if you set your indent to 4 when printing users, the first element will be indented by four characters, while the nested elements will be indented by more than eight characters because the indentation starts from the end of the first key:

Python
      
        
      
    
>>> pprint(users[0], depth=2, indent=4)
{   'address': {   'city': 'Gwenborough',
                   'geo': {...},
                   'street': 'Kulas Light',
                   'suite': 'Apt. 556',
                   'zipcode': '92998-3874'},
    'company': {   'bs': 'harness real-time e-markets',
                   'catchPhrase': 'Multi-layered client-server neural-net',
                   'name': 'Romaguera-Crona'},
    'email': 'Sincere@april.biz',
    'id': 1,
    'name': 'Leanne Graham',
    'phone': '1-770-736-8031 x56442',
    'username': 'Bret',
    'website': 'hildegard.org'}

This is just another part of the pretty in Python’s pprint()!

Limiting Your Line Lengths: `width`

By default, pprint() will only output up to eighty characters per line. You can customize this value by passing in a width argument. pprint() will make an effort to fit the contents on one line. If the contents of a data structure go over this limit, then it’ll print every element of the current data structure on a new line:

Python
      
        
      
    
>>> pprint(users[0])
{'address': {'city': 'Gwenborough',
             'geo': {'lat': '-37.3159', 'lng': '81.1496'},
             'street': 'Kulas Light',
             'suite': 'Apt. 556',
             'zipcode': '92998-3874'},
 'company': {'bs': 'harness real-time e-markets',
             'catchPhrase': 'Multi-layered client-server neural-net',
             'name': 'Romaguera-Crona'},
 'email': 'Sincere@april.biz',
 'id': 1,
 'name': 'Leanne Graham',
 'phone': '1-770-736-8031 x56442',
 'username': 'Bret',
 'website': 'hildegard.org'}

When you leave the width at the default of eighty characters, the dictionary at users[0]['address']['geo'] only contains a 'lat' and a 'lng' attribute. This means that taking the sum of the indent and the number of characters needed to print out the dictionary, including the spaces in between, comes to less than eighty characters. Since it’s less than eighty characters, the default width, pprint() puts it all on one line.

However, the dictionary at users[0]['company'] would go over the default width, so pprint() puts each key on a new line. This is true of dictionaries, lists, tuples, and sets:

Python
      
        
      
    
>>> pprint(users[0], width=160)
{'address': {'city': 'Gwenborough', 'geo': {'lat': '-37.3159', 'lng': '81.1496'}, 'street': 'Kulas Light', 'suite': 'Apt. 556', 'zipcode': '92998-3874'},
 'company': {'bs': 'harness real-time e-markets', 'catchPhrase': 'Multi-layered client-server neural-net', 'name': 'Romaguera-Crona'},
 'email': 'Sincere@april.biz',
 'id': 1,
 'name': 'Leanne Graham',
 'phone': '1-770-736-8031 x56442',
 'username': 'Bret',
 'website': 'hildegard.org'}

If you set the width to a large value like 160, then all the nested dictionaries fit on one line. You can even take it to extremes and use a huge value like 500, which, for this example, prints the whole dictionary on one line:

Python
      
>>> pprint(users[0], width=500)
{'address': {'city': 'Gwenborough', 'geo': {'lat': '-37.3159', 'lng': '81.1496'}, 'street': 'Kulas Light', 'suite': 'Apt. 556', 'zipcode': '92998-3874'}, 'company': {'bs': 'harness real-time e-markets', 'catchPhrase': 'Multi-layered client-server neural-net', 'name': 'Romaguera-Crona'}, 'email': 'Sincere@april.biz', 'id': 1, 'name': 'Leanne Graham', 'phone': '1-770-736-8031 x56442', 'username': 'Bret', 'website': 'hildegard.org'}

Here, you get the effects of setting width to a relatively large value. You can go the other way and set width to a low value such as 1. However, the main effect that this will have is making sure every data structure will display its components on separate lines. You’ll still get the visual indentation that lines up the components:

Python
      
        
      
    
>>> pprint(users[0], width=5)
{'address': {'city': 'Gwenborough',
             'geo': {'lat': '-37.3159',
                     'lng': '81.1496'},
             'street': 'Kulas '
                       'Light',
             'suite': 'Apt. '
                      '556',
             'zipcode': '92998-3874'},
 'company': {'bs': 'harness '
                   'real-time '
                   'e-markets',
             'catchPhrase': 'Multi-layered '
                            'client-server '
                            'neural-net',
             'name': 'Romaguera-Crona'},
 'email': 'Sincere@april.biz',
 'id': 1,
 'name': 'Leanne '
         'Graham',
 'phone': '1-770-736-8031 '
          'x56442',
 'username': 'Bret',
 'website': 'hildegard.org'}

It’s hard to get Python’s pprint() to print ugly. It’ll do everything it can to be pretty!

In this example, on top of learning about width, you’re also exploring how the printer splits up long lines of text. Note how users[0]["company"]["catchPhrase"], which was initially 'Multi-layered client-server neural-net', has been split on each space. The printer avoids dividing this string mid-word because that would make it hard to read.

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Squeezing Your Long Sequences: `compact`

You might think that compact refers to the behavior you explored in the section about width—that is, whether compact makes data structures appear on one line or separate lines. However, compact only affects the output once a line goes over the width.

Note: compact only affects the output of sequences: lists, sets, and tuples, and not dictionaries. This is intentional, though it’s not clear why this decision was taken. There’s an ongoing discussion about that in Python Issue #34798.

If compact is True, then the output will wrap onto the next line. The default behavior is for each element to appear on its own line if the data structure is longer than the width:

Python
      
        
      
    
>>> pprint(users, depth=1)
[{...}, {...}, {...}, {...}, {...}, {...}, {...}, {...}, {...}, {...}]

>>> pprint(users, depth=1, width=40)
[{...},
 {...},
 {...},
 {...},
 {...},
 {...},
 {...},
 {...},
 {...},
 {...}]

>>> pprint(users, depth=1, width=40, compact=True)
[{...}, {...}, {...}, {...}, {...},
 {...}, {...}, {...}, {...}, {...}]

Pretty-printing this list using the default settings prints out the abbreviated version on one line. Limiting width to 40 characters, you force pprint() to output all the list’s elements on separate lines. If you then set compact=True, then the list will wrap at forty characters and be more compact than it would typically look.

Note: Beware that setting the width to less than seven characters— which, in this case, is equivalent to the [{...}, output— seems to bypass the depth argument completely, and pprint() ends up printing everything without any folding. This has been reported as bug #45611.

compact is useful for long sequences with short elements that would otherwise take up many lines and make the output less readable.

Directing Your Output: `stream`

The stream parameter refers to the output of pprint(). By default, it goes to the same place that print() goes to. Specifically, it goes to sys.stdout, which is actually a file object in Python. However, you can redirect this to any file object, just like you can with print():

Python
      
>>> with open("output.txt", mode="w") as file_object:
...     pprint(users, stream=file_object)

Here you create a file object with open(), and then you set the stream parameter in pprint() to that file object. If you then open the output.txt file, you should see that you’ve pretty-printed everything in users there.

Python does have its own logging module. However, you can also use pprint() to send pretty outputs to files and have these act as logs if you prefer.

Preventing Dictionary Sorting: `sort_dicts`

Although dictionaries are generally considered unordered data structures, since Python 3.6, dictionaries are ordered by insertion.

pprint() orders the keys alphabetically for printing:

Python
      
        
      
    
>>> pprint(users[0], depth=1)
{'address': {...},
 'company': {...},
 'email': 'Sincere@april.biz',
 'id': 1,
 'name': 'Leanne Graham',
 'phone': '1-770-736-8031 x56442',
 'username': 'Bret',
 'website': 'hildegard.org'}

>>> pprint(users[0], depth=1, sort_dicts=False)
{'id': 1,
 'name': 'Leanne Graham',
 'username': 'Bret',
 'email': 'Sincere@april.biz',
 'address': {...},
 'phone': '1-770-736-8031 x56442',
 'website': 'hildegard.org',
 'company': {...}}

Unless you set sort_dicts to False, Python’s pprint() sorts the keys alphabetically. It keeps the output for dictionaries consistent, readable, and—well—pretty!

When pprint() was first implemented, dictionaries were unordered. Without alphabetically ordering the keys, a dictionary’s keys could have theoretically differed at each print.

Prettifying Your Numbers: `underscore_numbers`

The underscore_numbers parameter is a feature introduced in Python 3.10 that makes long numbers more readable. Considering that the example you’ve been using so far doesn’t contain any long numbers, you’ll need a new example to try it out:

Python
      
>>> number_list = [123456789, 10000000000000]
>>> pprint(number_list, underscore_numbers=True)
[123_456_789, 10_000_000_000_000]

If you tried running this call to pprint() and got an error, you’re not alone. As of October 2021, this argument doesn’t work when calling pprint() directly. The Python community noticed this quickly, and it’s been fixed in the December 2021 3.10.1 bugfix release. The folks at Python care about their pretty printer! They’ll probably have fixed this by the time you’re reading this tutorial.

If underscore_numbers doesn’t work when you call pprint() directly and you really want pretty numbers, there is a workaround: When you create your own PrettyPrinter object, this parameter should work just like it does in the example above.

Next, you’ll cover how to create a PrettyPrinter object.

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Creating a Custom `PrettyPrinter` Object

It’s possible to create an instance of PrettyPrinter that has defaults you’ve defined. Once you have this new instance of your custom PrettyPrinter object, you can use it by calling the .pprint() method on the PrettyPrinter instance:

Python
      
        
      
    
>>> from pprint import PrettyPrinter
>>> custom_printer = PrettyPrinter(
...     indent=4,
...     width=100,
...     depth=2,
...     compact=True,
...     sort_dicts=False,
...     underscore_numbers=True
... )
...
>>> custom_printer.pprint(users[0])
{   'id': 1,
    'name': 'Leanne Graham',
    'username': 'Bret',
    'email': 'Sincere@april.biz',
    'address': {   'street': 'Kulas Light',
                   'suite': 'Apt. 556',
                   'city': 'Gwenborough',
                   'zipcode': '92998-3874',
                   'geo': {...}},
    'phone': '1-770-736-8031 x56442',
    'website': 'hildegard.org',
    'company': {   'name': 'Romaguera-Crona',
                   'catchPhrase': 'Multi-layered client-server neural-net',
                   'bs': 'harness real-time e-markets'}}
>>> number_list = [123456789, 10000000000000]
>>> custom_printer.pprint(number_list)
[123_456_789, 10_000_000_000_000]

With these commands, you:

Imported PrettyPrinter, which is a class definition
Created a new instance of that class with certain parameters
Printed the first user in users
Defined a list of a couple of long numbers
Printed number_list, which also demonstrates underscore_numbers in action

Note that the arguments you passed to PrettyPrinter are exactly the same as the default pprint() arguments, except that you skipped the first parameter. In pprint(), this is the object you want to print.

This way, you can have various printer presets—perhaps some going to different streams—and call them when you need them.

Getting a Pretty String With `pformat()`

What if you don’t want to send the pretty output of pprint() to a stream? Perhaps you want to do some regex matching and replace certain keys. For plain dictionaries, you might find yourself wanting to remove the brackets and quotes to make them look even more human-readable.

Whatever it is that you might want to do with the string pre-output, you can get the string by using pformat():

Python
      
        
      
    
>>> from pprint import pformat
>>> address = pformat(users[0]["address"])
>>> chars_to_remove = ["{", "}", "'"]
>>> for char in chars_to_remove:
...     address = address.replace(char, "")
...
>>> print(address)
city: Gwenborough,
 geo: lat: -37.3159, lng: 81.1496,
 street: Kulas Light,
 suite: Apt. 556,
 zipcode: 92998-3874

pformat() is a tool you can use to get between the pretty printer and the output stream.

Another use case for this might be if you’re building an API and want to send a pretty string representation of the JSON string. Your end users would probably appreciate it!

Handling Recursive Data Structures

Python’s pprint() is recursive, meaning it’ll pretty-print all the contents of a dictionary, all the contents of any child dictionaries, and so on.

Ask yourself what happens when a recursive function runs into a recursive data structure. Imagine that you have dictionary A and dictionary B:

A has one attribute, .link, which points to B.
B has one attribute, .link, which points to A.

If your imaginary recursive function has no way to handle this circular reference, it’ll never finish printing! It would print A and then its child, B. But B also has A as a child, so it would go on into infinity.

Luckily, both the normal print() function and the pprint() function handle this gracefully:

Python
      
        
      
    
>>> A = {}
>>> B = {"link": A}
>>> A["link"] = B
>>> print(A)
{'link': {'link': {...}}}
>>> from pprint import pprint
>>> pprint(A)
{'link': {'link': <Recursion on dict with id=3032338942464>}}

While Python’s regular print() just abbreviates the output, pprint() explicitly notifies you of recursion and also adds the ID of the dictionary.

If you want to explore why this structure is recursive, you can learn more about passing by reference.

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Conclusion

You’ve explored the primary usage of the pprint module in Python and some ways to work with pprint() and PrettyPrinter. You’ll find that pprint() is especially handy whenever you’re developing something that deals with complex data structures. Maybe you’re developing an application that uses an unfamiliar API. Perhaps you have a data warehouse full of deeply-nested JSON files. These are all situations where pprint can come in handy.

In this tutorial, you’ve learned how to:

Import pprint for use in your programs
Use pprint() in place of the regular print()
Understand all the parameters you can use to customize your pretty-printed output
Get the formatted output as a string before printing it
Create a custom instance of PrettyPrinter
Recognize recursive data structures and how pprint() handles them

To help you get to grips with the function and parameters, you used an example of a data structure representing some users. You also explored some situations where you might use pprint().

Congratulations! You’re now better equipped to deal with complex data by using Python’s pprint module.

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Prettify Your Data Structures With Pretty Print in Python

Understanding the Need for Python’s Pretty Print

Working With pprint

Exploring Optional Parameters of pprint()

Summarizing Your Data: depth

Giving Your Data Space: indent

Limiting Your Line Lengths: width

Squeezing Your Long Sequences: compact

Directing Your Output: stream

Preventing Dictionary Sorting: sort_dicts

Prettifying Your Numbers: underscore_numbers

Creating a Custom PrettyPrinter Object

Getting a Pretty String With pformat()

Handling Recursive Data Structures

Conclusion

Working With `pprint`

Exploring Optional Parameters of `pprint()`

Summarizing Your Data: `depth`

Giving Your Data Space: `indent`

Limiting Your Line Lengths: `width`

Squeezing Your Long Sequences: `compact`

Directing Your Output: `stream`

Preventing Dictionary Sorting: `sort_dicts`

Prettifying Your Numbers: `underscore_numbers`

Creating a Custom `PrettyPrinter` Object

Getting a Pretty String With `pformat()`