[nested dics] Easy way to find if a key exists?

[Winfried]

Hello,

I'm using xmltodict to work with XML files. It turns data into nested dictionaries.

In nested dictionaries that don't contain the same keys, I can't find an easy way to simply check if any given key exists somewhere.

The following functions don't work as expected:

def f(d, keys):
    if not keys:
        return True
    return keys[0] in d and f(d[keys[0]], keys[1:])
	
def keys_exists(element, *keys):
    '''
    Check if *keys (nested) exists in `element` (dict).
    '''
    if not isinstance(element, dict):
        raise AttributeError('keys_exists() expects dict as first argument.')
    if len(keys) == 0:
        raise AttributeError('keys_exists() expects at least two arguments, one given.')

    _element = element
    for key in keys:
        try:
            _element = _element[key]
        except KeyError:
            return False
    return True

Is there a way besides looping?

Thank you.