Is there a native function to flatten a nested dictionary to an output dictionary where keys and values are in this format:

_dict2 = {'this.is.an.example': 2,'this.is.another.value': 4,'this.example.too': 3,'example': 'fish'
}

Assuming the dictionary will have several different value types, how should I go about iterating the dictionary?

You want to traverse the dictionary, building the current key and accumulating the flat dictionary. For example:

def flatten(current, key, result):if isinstance(current, dict):for k in current:new_key = "{0}.{1}".format(key, k) if len(key) > 0 else kflatten(current[k], new_key, result)else:result[key] = currentreturn resultresult = flatten(my_dict, '', {})

Using it:

print(flatten(_dict1, '', {})){'this.example.too': 3, 'example': 'fish', 'this.is.another.value': 4, 'this.is.an.example': 2}