# Iterate Over a Dictionary in Python with For Loops

> Loop through Python dictionary keys directly, use items() to access key-value pairs together, or add enumerate() for positional indexing during iteration

**URL:** https://sentry.io/answers/python-iterate-dictionary/

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## The Problem

How can I iterate over a dictionary using a Python for loop?

## The Solution

The simplest way to iterate over a Python dictionary is to iterate over its keys. The following code will print each key in a dictionary with its corresponding value:

```python
word_counts = {"the": 3, "a": 5, "be": 2, "do": 1}

for key in word_counts:
    print(f"{key}: {word_counts[key]}")
```

While this works, we may prefer to iterate over keys and values at the same time. Python's built-in `dict` class includes a method called [`items()`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#dict.items), which returns a [dictionary view object](https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#dict-views) that can be used for exactly this purpose. Below, we've rewritten our code to use this method:

```python
word_counts = {"the": 3, "a": 5, "be": 2, "do": 1}

for key, value in word_counts.items():
    print(f"{key}: {value}")
```

You can also use the `enumerate()` function to get the index and key-value in the iteration. This is useful if you need the position of the element in the dictionary along with the key-value pair:

```python
word_counts = {"the": 3, "a": 5, "be": 2, "do": 1}

for index, (key, value) in enumerate(word_counts.items()):
    print(f"{index}  {key}:{value}")
```

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*Source: [sentry.io/answers/python-iterate-dictionary/](https://sentry.io/answers/python-iterate-dictionary/)*