Search dictionary for matching values

Question

I have a dictionary self.indexList = {} filled with 3-item-lists values = [lineId, nominalLineId, vertex] for each dictionary key (its a supplement to a QgsSpatialIndex in PyQGIS, btw).

I need to reverse-search this dictionary for matching tuples of lineId and vertex. This function is the dealbreaker in a larger PyQGIS algorithm; called multiple times (almost 40.000 with a large test dataset) and causing 2/3 of total running time.

def get_idx_from_values(instance, lineID, vertex):
    """Searches the indexList for a lineID and a vertex number (= unique line segment).
    Returns dic index (=fid)."""
    items = instance.indexList.items()
    for idx, values in items:
        if values[0] == lineID and values[2] == vertex:
            return idx
    print("No index entry found for line " + str(lineID) + ", Vertex " + str(vertex))
    return None

I already found Search in a big dictionary Python where a second dictionary with a reversion of key and value is suggested.

I consider this, but I'm open for other suggestions how to speed up the code above, as my case - matching two values with a certain key - adds complexity to the simple key/value reversion.

Answer 1

Tuples can be used as dictionary keys, so creating a second dictionary for reverse lookups can be as simple as:

reverse_lookup = {(lineID, vertex): idx 
                  for idx, (lineId, _, vertex) 
                  in instance.indexList.items()}