Python recursive search

finditems.py

# Recursively searches a Python object (composed of both dicts and lists) to find all items with key name `key`
def finditems(obj, key, results: list = None) -> list:
    if results is None:
        # this is the outermost function call, so init storage for all recursive calls
        results = []

    if isinstance(obj, dict):
        if key in obj:
            results.append(obj[key])
        # recurse through dict
        for k, v in obj.items():
            if isinstance(v, dict) or isinstance(v, list):
                finditem(v, key, results)
    elif isinstance(obj, list):
        if key in obj:
            results.append(obj)
        # recurse through list
        for v in obj:
            if isinstance(v, dict) or isinstance(v, list):
                finditem(v, key, results)
    return results