urlencode a multidimensional dictionary in python

Question

How can I get a URL-encoded version of a multidimensional dictionary in Python? Unfortunately, urllib.urlencode() only works in a single dimension. I would need a version capable of recursively encoding the dictionary.

For example, if I have the following dictionary:

{'a': 'b', 'c': {'d': 'e'}}

I want to obtain the following string:

a=b&c[d]=e

Answer 1

Something like this?

a = {'a': 'b', 'c': {'d': 'e'}}

url = urllib.urlencode([('%s[%s]'%(k,v.keys()[0]), v.values()[0] ) if type(v)==dict else (k,v) for k,v in a.iteritems()])

url = 'a=b&c%5Bd%5D=e'

Answer 2

what about json.dumps and json.loads?

d = {'a': 'b', 'c': {'d': 'e'}}
s = json.dumps(d)  # s: '{"a": "b", "c": {"d": "e"}}'
json.loads(s)  # -> d

Answer 3

OK guys. I implemented it myself:

import urllib

def recursive_urlencode(d):
    def recursion(d, base=None):
        pairs = []

        for key, value in d.items():
            if hasattr(value, 'values'):
                pairs += recursion(value, key)
            else:
                new_pair = None
                if base:
                    new_pair = "%s[%s]=%s" % (base, urllib.quote(unicode(key)), urllib.quote(unicode(value)))
                else:
                    new_pair = "%s=%s" % (urllib.quote(unicode(key)), urllib.quote(unicode(value)))
                pairs.append(new_pair)
        return pairs

    return '&'.join(recursion(d))

Still, I'd be interested to know if there's a better way to do this. I can't believe Python's standard library doesn't implement this.