Python Counter() adding value to existing keys
Question: 
    developer_base = Counter({
            'user1': {'XS': 0, 'S': 0, 'M': 0, 'L': 0, 'XL': 0},
            'user2': {'XS': 0, 'S': 0, 'M': 0, 'L': 0, 'XL': 0},
            'user3': {'XS': 0, 'S': 0, 'M': 0, 'L': 0, 'XL': 0},
            'user4': {'XS': 0, 'S': 0, 'M': 0, 'L': 0, 'XL': 0},
        })
    

Loop to gather Counter data:

    
    
    for y in time_list:
                    story_size = models.get_specific_story(y['story_id'])
                    if story_size is not "?":
                        counts = Counter(y['minutes_spent'])
                        print(counts)
                        developer_base = developer_base + counts
    

Should `Counter`be part of a for loop? story_size always equals one of the
keys in the nested dict (S,XS,M etc). `time_list` has the ['minutes_spent']
which is the value that needs to add into the dictionary. the problem seems to
be that time_list has a nested dict which is ['user']['first_name'] and it is
equal to the developer_base keys for user1 through user4.

So I need to add up all the 'minutes_spent' in time_list for each user.

Update: JSON data

    
    
    [{'project_slug': 'test', 'project_id': 19855, 'date': '2016-02-11', 'task_name': None, 'iteration_name': 'test', 'notes': '', 'user_id': 81946, 'story_id': 392435, 'iteration_id': 76693, 'story_name': 'test', 'user': {'id': 81946, 'last_name': 'test', 'first_name': 'user1', 'email': 'test', 'username': 'test'}, 'project_name': 'Development', 'id': 38231, 'minutes_spent': 240}]
    

The data is much larger but this is one whole section.


Answer: In the first snippet, you are abusing `Counter`. That snippet only works due
to quirks in Python 2, where one can compare dicts. The values of a counter
are supposed to be numbers.

Similarly, `y['minutes_spent']` is an integer, and
`Counter(y['minutes_spent'])` will just throw an error. In addition,
`story_size is not "?"` [does not do what you
expect](http://stackoverflow.com/q/132988/35070).

Assuming the real problem is

> add up all the 'minutes_spent' in time_list for each user.

then you can use a Counter:

    
    
    from collections import Counter
    c = Counter()
    for y in time_list:
        c[y['user']['id']] += y['minutes_spent']
    

