How to combine try/except in python into a pretty one liner?

Question

In order to make CSV files with many columns, I have many, many instances of

try:
  printlist.append(text['data'])
except:
  printlist.append('')

Is it possible to condense these 4 lines into 1 or 2 (mostly for easier reading of the code)? I've tried with this function but I haven't discovered a way to pass something that doesn't exist.

def tryexcept(input):
    try:
        printlist.append(input)
    except:
        printlist.append('')

    return printlist

UPDATE I should mention that 'text' is actually a dict value, so it should look like

printlist.append(text['data'])

(changed above)

Answer 1

What about:

printlist.append(text['data'] if 'data' in text else '')

Or even better as @bruno desthuilliers suggested:

printlist.append(text.get('data',''))

[EDIT]

For nested dict I normally use my dict selector:

class TokenDataType:
    LIST = "list"
    DICT = "dict"

def _select_key(keyitt, data):
    try:
        new_key = keyitt.next()
    except StopIteration:
        return data
    if new_key["t"] == TokenDataType.DICT:
        return _select_key(keyitt, data[new_key["k"]])
    elif new_key["t"] == TokenDataType.LIST:
        return _select_key(keyitt, data[new_key["i"]])

def tokenize_query(query):
    tokens = []
    for token in query.split("."):
        token = token.strip()
        if token:
            ttype = TokenDataType.LIST if "[" in token else TokenDataType.DICT
            if ttype == TokenDataType.LIST:
                index = None
                if len(token) >= 3:
                    index = int(token.replace("[", "").replace("]", ""))
                tokens.append({"k":token, "t":ttype, "i":index})
            else:
                tokens.append({"k":token, "t":ttype})
    return tokens

def normalize_query(query=None, tokens=None):
    if tokens == None:
        tokens = tokenize_query(query)
    return ".".join([token["k"] for token in tokens])

def select(query, data, throw_exception_on_key_not_found=False):
    tokens = tokenize_query(query)
    try:
        return _select_key(iter(tokens), data)
    except Exception as e:
        if throw_exception_on_key_not_found:
            raise e
        return None

DQ = select

if __name__ == "__main__":
    test = {"bla":1, "foo":{"bar":2}, "baz":[{"x":1}, {"x":2}]}
    print(DQ(".bla", test))
    print(DQ("bla", test))
    print(DQ("nothere", test))
    print(DQ(".foo", test))
    print(DQ("foo.bar", test))
    print(DQ("baz", test))
    print(DQ("baz.[0]", test))
    print(DQ("baz.[1].x", test))
    print(DQ("baz.[2].x", test))

for your case (appends None when one of the keys is not found):

printlist.append(DQ("data.someotherkey.yetanotherkey", text))