Weird session-state behaviour when storing a list of dictionaries

Using Streamlit
1

Hi everyone, I recently started to use streamlit and came accross a behaviour that I don’t really understand, basically, I’m trying to create json files (so, python dicts), with as many keys/values as the user wants for each dict, the dicts are then stored in a list.
I first use a list stored in the session state to store the different key/value pairs and allow the user to add more of them, then I turn my list (and another value that’s just input once globally, so no session state there) into an actual dict, which I then store in another session state list. Here’s the code (stripped down for convenience, but the issue is still there):

import streamlit as st

if 'memoire' not in st.session_state:
    st.session_state['memoire'] = []
if 'var_list' not in st.session_state:
    st.session_state['var_list'] = []

variable_name = st.text_input('Variable name', value='variable_test')
variable_type = st.selectbox('Variable type', ['string', 'bool', 'float'])
variable_required = st.checkbox('Required ?')

add_to_list = st.button('Add variable')
if add_to_list:
    st.session_state.var_list.append({variable_name: {"type": variable_type, "required": variable_required}})

names = []
for x in st.session_state.var_list:
    for key, value in x.items():
        names.append(key)

op1_name = st.selectbox('pick a variable', names)

schema = {}
for x in st.session_state.var_list:
    schema.update(x)
schema[names[0]]['custom_rules'] = {}
schema[names[0]]['custom_rules']['operations'] = [{'variable': op1_name}]

display_current = st.checkbox('display current schema')
if display_current:
    st.json(schema)

save_to_state = st.button("save schema to state")
if save_to_state:
    st.session_state['memoire'].append(schema)
st.json(st.session_state.memoire)

I would expect that, after saving one complete dict (what I call a schema in my code), it would just stay there and that newer schemas would simply be added to the list, but that’s not the case, if you run the app and add 2 variables, say “a” and “b”, then save to state, you can see that when you change the input in the “pick a variable” field, the change also happens in “memoire” (displayed at the bottom of the app) :

streamlit0
streamlit0735×863 26.5 KB

let’s set the ‘pick a variable’ selectbox to ‘b’ and :
streamlit1
streamlit1741×873 26.6 KB

Furthermore, if you try to save several schemas, you’ll notice that they are always identical (and that changing ‘pick a variable’ edits all of them at once).
It seems to me that the ‘memoire’ variable is stored as a list of the variable ‘schema’, instead of being a list of values ‘schema’ held when it was saved, but that’s just a random guess. Is this behaviour intended in streamlit, and does anyone know of a way to get around this ?
Thanks in advance !

1 Like
2

Okay so while investigating the issue I came across another unexpected behaviour which, i guess, causes my issue : In the following code

import streamlit as st

if 'var_list' not in st.session_state:
    st.session_state.var_list = []

variable_name = st.text_input('Variable name', value='variable_test')
variable_type = st.selectbox('Variable type', ['string', 'bool', 'float'])
variable_required = st.checkbox('Required ?')

add_to_list = st.button('Add variable')
if add_to_list:
    st.session_state.var_list.append({variable_name: {"type": variable_type, "required": variable_required}})

names = []
schema = {}
for x in st.session_state.var_list:
    for key, value in x.items():
        names.append(key)
    schema.update(x)
st.write(schema)
op1_name = st.selectbox('pick a variable', names)
schema[names[0]]['custom_rules'] = {} 
schema[names[0]]['custom_rules']['operations'] = [{'variable': op1_name}]
"variable list"
st.write(st.session_state.var_list)
"schema"
st.write(schema)

if you launch the app then add a variable, you’ll notice that st.session_state.var_list’s unique element has a “custom_rules” key, as well as “operations” and “variable” ones, that’s of course not supposed to happen since the only time something is added to var_list is when add_to_list is clicked, in which case something of the shape {variable_name: {"type": variable_type, "required": variable_required}} is added. I messed around with some print statements and found out that the extra keys are added to var_list when they’re added to schema, i.e. in

schema[names[0]]["custom_rules"] = {} 
schema[names[0]]["custom_rules"]["operations"] = [{"variable": op1_name}]

Why does this happen ? The only link between schema and var_list is that schema is created by taking the elements of var_list and using the update function, which, as far as I’m aware, should not “link” the two variables together.
If anyone understands what’s happening I’d really appreciate some explanations.
Thanks

3

I usually get weird ‘linked’ behaviour such as this when working with dictionaries. The way I deal with it is to create a deepcopy of the original list/dictionary, perform my operations on the copy and delete the copy at the end. You could try something like:

import copy

var_list_copy = copy.deepcopy(st.session_state.var_list)
names = []
schema = {}

for x in var_list_copy:
    for key, value in x.items():
        names.append(key)
    schema.update(x)

# your other code here, and at the end;

del var_list_copy
del names, schema # delete these too since it looks like it's only the 'var_list' that needs to be persistent.

This way, there will be no ‘links’ between var_list and any other operations you perform on its data. I admit it’s a wierd behaviour but using copy.deepcopy() works for me every time.

2 Likes
4

This works perfectly, thanks !

5

Glad to help.