title: Django: Converting an entire set of a Model's objects into a single dictionary
body: <p><em>If you came here from Google looking for model to dict, skip my question, and just jump down to the first answer. My question will only confuse you.</em></p>
  
  <p>Is there a good way in Django to  entire set of a Model's objects into a single dictionary? I mean, like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>class DictModel(models.Model):
      key = models.CharField(20)
      value = models.CharField(200)
  
  
  DictModel.objects.all().to_dict()
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>... with the result being a dictionary with the key/value pairs made up of records in the Model? Has anyone else seen this as being useful for them?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks.<br />
  <br />
  <strong>Update</strong><br />
  I just wanted to add is that my ultimate goal is to be able to do a simple variable lookup inside a Template. Something like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>{{ DictModel.exampleKey }}
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>With a result of DictModel.objects.get(key__exact=exampleKey).value</p>
  
  <p>Overall, though, you guys have really surprised me with how helpful allof your responses are, and how different the ways to approach it can be. Thanks a lot.
  <br />
  <br />
  <strong>Update October 2011:</strong>
  This question is the top result if you Google "django model_to_dict", which is actually pretty awful given that it solves a different problem than what I was asking.<br />
  <br />
  What I wanted was to be able to map all of the instances in a queryset into a single dictionary with a specified model field as the key.<br />
  model_to_dict, on the other hand converts a single model instance into a dictionary.<br />
  <br />
  Now, my needs at the time were pretty darn specific, and probably extremely rare (I can't even remember the project I needed it for, or why). So I would be pretty surprised that anyone looking for information about model_to_dict is going to find my question actually useful. Sorry.<br />
  <br />
  model_to_dict seems to be a much more common usage case than I had.
  <br />
  <br />
  <strong>Update Dec 2011:</strong><br />
  I changed the title to hopefully better reflect my original intent.</p>