AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'get' (Python)

AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'get' (Python) #

The Python "AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'get'" occurs when we try to call the get() method on a string instead of a dictionary. To solve the error, make sure the value is of type dict before calling the get() method on it.

Here is an example of how the error occurs.

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my_str = 'hello world'

# ⛔️ AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'get'
print(my_str.get('name'))

We tried to call the get() method on a string instead of a dictionary and got the error.

If you are trying to get the value of a specific key in a dictionary, make sure the value you are calling get() on is a dict.

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my_dict = {'name': 'Alice', 'age': 30}

print(my_dict.get('name'))  # 👉️ 'Alice'
print(my_dict.get('age'))  # 👉️ 30

Make sure the variable doesn't get reassigned to a string somewhere in your code.

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my_dict = {'name': 'Alice', 'age': 30}

# 👇️ reassigned to string by mistake
my_dict = 'hello world'

# ⛔️ AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'get'
print(my_dict.get('name'))

We initially set the my_dict variable to a dictionary, but later reassigned it to a string which caused the error.

The dict.get method returns the value for the given key if the key is in the dictionary, otherwise a default value is returned.

The method takes the following 2 parameters:

If a value for the default parameter is not provided, it defaults to None, so the get() method never raises a KeyError.

If you need to handle a scenario where the value is possibly not a dict, use the hasattr() method.

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my_dict = {'name': 'Alice', 'age': 30}

if hasattr(my_dict, 'get'):
    print(my_dict.get('name'))  # 👉️ "Alice"
else:
    print('Value is not a dict')

The hasattr function takes the following 2 parameters:

The hasattr() function returns True if the string is the name of one of the object's attributes, otherwise False is returned.

If you are trying to access a string at a specific index, use square brackets.

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my_str = 'hello world'

try:
    print(my_str[100])
except IndexError:
    print('Index 100 is not present in string') # 👉️ this runs

We used a try/except statement to handle the scenario where the index we are trying to access is out of bounds.

If you need to get a substring from a string, use string slicing.

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my_str = 'hello world'

# 👇️ from index 0 (inclusive) to 5 (exclusive)
print(my_str[0:5])  # 👉️ 'hello'

# 👇️ from index 6 (inclusive) to end
print(my_str[6:])  # 👉️ 'world'

The first example shows how to get the first 5 characters from a string, and the second example - from character at index 6 onwards.

A good way to start debugging is to print(dir(your_object)) and see what attributes a string has.

Here is an example of what printing the attributes of a string looks like.

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my_string = 'hello world'

# [ 'capitalize', 'casefold', 'center', 'count', 'encode', 'endswith', 'expandtabs', 'find', 'format',
#  'format_map', 'index', 'isalnum', 'isalpha', 'isascii', 'isdecimal', 'isdigit', 'isidentifier',
#  'islower', 'isnumeric', 'isprintable', 'isspace', 'istitle', 'isupper', 'join', 'ljust', 'lower',
#  'lstrip', 'maketrans', 'partition', 'removeprefix', 'removesuffix', 'replace', 'rfind', 'rindex',
#  'rjust', 'rpartition', 'rsplit', 'rstrip', 'split', 'splitlines', 'startswith', 'strip', 'swapcase',
#  'title', 'translate', 'upper', 'zfill']
print(dir(my_string))

If you pass a class to the dir() function, it returns a list of names of the class's attributes, and recursively of the attributes of its bases.

Since get() is not a method implemented by strings, the error is caused.

Conclusion #

The Python "AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'get'" occurs when we try to call the get() method on a string instead of a dictionary. To solve the error, make sure the value is of type dict before calling the get() method on it.