An ok way to flatten nested dictionaries in Python (iteratively, not recursively). Even does basic circularity checks (untested at this point).

flatten_dict.py

def flatten_dict(root, prefix_keys=True):
    dicts = [([], root)]
    ret = {}
    seen = set()
    for path, d in dicts:
        if id(d) in seen:
            continue
        seen.add(id(d))
        for k, v in d.items():
            new_path = path + [k]
            prefix = '_'.join(new_path) if prefix_keys else k
            if hasattr(v, 'items'):
                dicts.append((new_path, v))
            else:
                ret[prefix] = v
    return ret