Create a function that loops through a nested list and return a dictionary: Empty elements in list return a none in dictionary

Question

I am using Python 3. I need to create a function: contacts() that loops through a nested list and returns a dictionary of an item for each contact name and area-code. If the data does not include area code (empty element) then the value should be None.

My starting list is:

contact_list = [["Mike Jordan", 310], ["Jay Z"], ["Oprah Winfrey", 213], ["Leo DeCaprio", 212]]

My return dictionary should be:

{
    "Mike Jordan": 310,
    "Jay Z": None,
    "Oprah Winfrey": 213,
    "Leo DeCaprio": 212,    
}

I am very new to python (I have used R in the past). I am hoping someone could help me solve this problem. It seems very simple but I am getting stuck at the point where my loop has to handle the empty value.

This is my most recent attempt:

none= None

def contacts(contact_list):
  for list in contact_list:
    if len(list) == 2:
      print(list)
    else:
      print(None)

But this returns:

['Mike Jordan', 310]
None
['Oprah Winfrey', 213]
['Leo DeCaprio', 212]

Answer 1

Assuming you'll never have repeated names in your contact_list

def contacts(contact_list):
    contact_dict = {}
    for contact in contact_list:
        try:
            contact_dict[contact[0]] = contact[1]
        except IndexError:
            contact_dict[contact[0]] = None
    return contact_dict