One my favorites, safe deep searching: by returning a dict you can run another .get var = {'a' : 'b' , 'c' : {'d' : 'f'}} print var.get('c', {}).get('d') pri

One my favorites, safe deep searching: by returning a dict you can run another .get var = {'a' : 'b' , 'c' : {'d' : 'f'}} print var.get('c', {}).get('d') print var.get('DNE', {}).get('d')