Get key by value in dictionary

Question

I wrote a function which looks up ages in a Dictionary and show the matching name:

dictionary = {'george' : 16, 'amber' : 19}
search_age = raw_input("Provide age")
for age in dictionary.values():
    if age == search_age:
        name = dictionary[age]
        print name

I know how to compare and find the age but how do I show the name of the person. Also, I am getting a KeyError because of line 5. I know it's not correct but I can't figure out how to make it search backward.

How do I fix this problem?

Answer 1

The problem here is you cannot use Dict in the above-mentioned way. You can try this:

for name, age in dictionary.items():    # for name, age in dictionary.iteritems():  (for Python 2.x)
    if age == search_age:
        print(name)

Answer 2

I have slightly modified your program to get the output as per age. Here is the code

dictionary = {'george' : 16, 'amber' : 19}
search_age = int(input("Provide age"))

for key, value in dictionary.items():
    if value == search_age:
        print(key, '::', value)