Type error int object is not subscriptable

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Posted by Marta on February 2, 2023 Viewed 11341 times

In this article, I will explain the main reason why you will encounter the Typeerror: ‘int’ object is not subscriptable error and a few different ways to fix it. I think it is essential to understand why this error occurs since a good understanding will help you avoid it in the future. And as consequence you will write better more reliable code.

This tutorial contains some code examples and possible ways to fix the error.

Typeerror: ‘int’ object is not subscriptable

The TypeError exception indicates that the operation executed is not supported or not meant to be. You will usually get this error when you pass to a function, arguments of the wrong type. In this case, I called a method that is not implemented by the class you are using.

The following code is the simplest case where you will encounter this error.

var_integer = 1
var_list = [3,5]

print(var_list[0])  
print(var_integer[0])

Output:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File line 5, in <module>
    print(var_integer[0])
TypeError: 'int' object is not subscriptable

The error will occur at line 5 because I am trying to access item #0 of a collection; however, the variable is an integer number. When I try to access the item of a collection, behind the scene, python will call an internal method called__getitem__ . The integer type doesn’t implement this method since the integer type is a scalar(a plain number).

‘float’ object is not subscriptable

The float type is also a scalar type; therefore, using any container type of operation, like accessing an item, will return this error.

Here is an example. The following code will throw the typerror at line 5

var_float = 1.0
var_list = [3,5]

print(var_list[0])  
print(var_float[0]) # Error

Output:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File line 11, in <module>
	print(var_float[0]) 
TypeError: 'float' object is not subscriptable

You can avoid this error just by removing the square brackets at line 5

Case 1: Example

Let’s see another code example where this Typeerror ‘int’ object is not subscriptable error occurs. Say that I want to write a program to calculate my lucky number based on my birth date. I will calculate my lucky number by adding all digits of my date of birth, in format dd/mm/yyyy, and then adding up the digits of the total. Here is an example:

Date of birth: 04/08/1984
4+8+1+9+8+4=34
3+4=7
Lucky number is 7

Here is the code I initially wrote to do this calculation:

birthday = '04/08/1984'

sum_month_digits = (int(birthday[0])+int(birthday[1]))
sum_day_digits = (int(birthday[3])+int(birthday[4]))
sum_year_digits= (int(birthday[6])+int(birthday[7])+int(birthday[8])+int(birthday[9]))

sum_all = sum_month_digits + sum_day_digits + sum_year_digits
lucky_number= (int(sum_all[0])+int(sum_all[1]))

print("Lucky number is", lucky_number)

Output:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File line 8, in <module>
	lucky_number= (int(sum_all[0])+int(sum_all[1]))
TypeError: 'int' object is not subscriptable

The error occurs at line #8. The reason is that the variable sum_all is an integer, not a string. Therefore I can’t treat this variable as a container and try to access each individual number. To fix this error, I could convert the sum_all variable to a string and then use the square brackets to access the digits.

lucky_number= (int(str(sum_all)[0])+int(str(sum_all)[1]))

The String type is a container like type, meaning that you can access each character using the index access. See the below example:

var_string='Hello'
print(var_string[0])

Output:

Case 2: Typeerror: ‘int’ object is not subscriptable json

Let’s see another scenario where this type error could arise. This error can also occur when you are working with JSON. As in the previous example, you will encounter the error when you treat a scalar variable, int or float, as a container and try to access by index.

Here is an example. The code below creates a product_json variable that contains a JSON with some products and information such as product name, category ,and product stock available. I would like to calculate the total stock available for all products.

import json
products_json='''
    {"products":
        [{"product":
            {"name":"Bike",
             "category":"sports",
             "stock": 4}
        },
        {"product":
            {"name":"Lamp",
             "category":"home",
             "stock": "3"}
        },
        {"product":
            {"name":"Table",
             "category":"home",
             "stock": "1"}
        }]
    }'''
products = json.loads(products_json)
products= products['products']
stock_list = [int(product['product']['stock'][0]) for product in products]
print(sum(stock_list))

Output:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File line 22, in <listcomp>
    stock_list = [int(product['product']['stock'][0]) for product in products]
TypeError: 'int' object is not subscriptable

What is this code doing? The code will first parse the JSON text, capture the stock number for each product, and add up these numbers to get the total stock.

Why does the error occur? This error is in line 22. In this line, I am grabbing each stock, expected it to be a string, grab the first digit, and then convert it to an integer. Where is the problem? Double-checking the stock field carefully, you will see that the stock field is a number type for the first product but string for the rest.

     "stock": 4}  # Issue is here
   	 "stock": "3"}
     "stock": "1"}

Solution

The best way to solve this problem is to change the stock field for all products, so they are all numbers. I can do that just by removing the double-quotes. And next removing the ‘access by index’ at line 22. I can’t use access by index because the stock field is now an int. Let’s see how the code looks like after fixing it:

import json
products_json='''
    {"products":
        [{"product":
            {"name":"Bike",
             "department":"sports",
             "stock": 4}
        },
        {"product":
            {"name":"Lamp",
             "department":"home",
             "stock": 3} #Removed double quotes
        },
        {"product":
            {"name":"Table",
             "department":"home",
             "stock": 1} #Removed double quotes
        }]
    }'''
products = json.loads(products_json)
products= products['products']
stock_list = [int(product['product']['stock']) for product in products] #Removed access by index
print(sum(stock_list))

The above is just a simple example, but I think It helps get a better understanding of this error. The better you understand these errors, the easier it is for you to avoid them when you are programming.

Conclusion

To summarise, when you encounter this error is important to double-check all access by index operation, the square bracket, and make sure you are just using them against container variables, such as lists, strings, tuples, etc. I hope this helps, and thanks for reading and supporting this blog. Happy Coding!

Recommended articles

Some objects in Python are subscriptable. This means that they contain, or can contain, other objects. Integers are not a subscriptable object. They are used to store whole numbers. If you treat an integer like a subscriptable object, an error will be raised.

In this guide, we’re going to talk about the “typeerror: ‘int’ object is not subscriptable” error and why it is raised. We’ll walk through a code snippet with this problem to show how you can solve it in your code. Let’s begin!

The Problem: typeerror: ‘int’ object is not subscriptable

We’ll start by taking a look at our error message:

typeerror: 'int' object is not subscriptable

The first part of our error message, TypeError, states the type of our error. A TypeError is an error that is raised when you try to perform an operation on a value that does not support that operation. Concatenating a string and an integer, for instance, raises a TypeError.

The second part of our message informs us of the cause.

This message is telling us that we are treating an integer, which is a whole number, like a subscriptable object. Integers are not subscriptable objects. Only objects that contain other objects, like strings, lists, tuples, and dictionaries, are subscriptable.

Let’s say you try to use indexing to access an item from a list:

email_providers = ["Gmail", "Outlook", "ProtonMail"]

print(email_providers[2])

This code returns: ProtonMail. Lists are subscriptable which means you can use indexing to retrieve a value from a list.

You cannot use this same syntax on a non-subscriptable value, like a float or an integer.

An Example Scenario

We’re going to write a program that asks a user for the date on which their next holiday starts and prints out each value on a separate line. This program will have an error that we can solve.

Let’s start by writing our main program:

holiday = int(input("When does your holiday begin? (mmddyyyy) "))

month = holiday[0:2]
day = holiday[2:4]
year = holiday[4:8]

print("Month:", month)
print("Day:", day)
print("Year:", year)

This program asks a user to insert the day on which their holiday begins using an input() statement. Then, we use slicing to retrieve the values of the month, day, and year that the user has specified. These values are stored in variables.

Next, we print out the values of these variables to the console. Each value is given a label which states the part of the date to which the value corresponds.

Let’s run our code:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "main.py", line 3, in <module>
	month = holiday[0:1]
TypeError: 'int' object is not subscriptable

Let’s fix this error.

The Solution

We have converted the value of “holiday” into an integer. This means that we cannot access it using slicing or indexing. Integers are not indexed like strings.

To solve this problem, we can remove the int() statement from our code. The input() statement returns a string value. We can slice this string value up using our code.

Let’s revise our input() statement:

holiday = input("When does your holiday begin? (mmddyyyy) ")

Now, let’s try to run our code:

When does your holiday begin? (mmddyyyy) 02042021
Month: 02
Day: 04
Year: 2021

Our code runs successfully! We are no longer trying to slice an integer because our code does not contain an int() statement. Instead, “holiday” is stored as a string. This string is sliced using the slicing syntax.

Conclusion

The “typeerror: ‘int’ object is not subscriptable” error is raised when you try to access an integer as if it were a subscriptable object, like a list or a dictionary.

To solve this problem, make sure that you do not use slicing or indexing to access values in an integer. If you need to perform an operation only available to subscriptable objects, like slicing or indexing, you should convert your integer to a string or a list first.

Now you’re ready to solve this Python TypeError like an expert!