How do I sort a list of dictionaries by a value of the dictionary?

Posted By: Anonymous

I have a list of dictionaries and want each item to be sorted by a specific value.

Take into consideration the list:

[{'name':'Homer', 'age':39}, {'name':'Bart', 'age':10}]

When sorted by name, it should become:

[{'name':'Bart', 'age':10}, {'name':'Homer', 'age':39}]

Solution

It may look cleaner using a key instead a cmp:

newlist = sorted(list_to_be_sorted, key=lambda k: k['name']) 

or as J.F.Sebastian and others suggested,

from operator import itemgetter
newlist = sorted(list_to_be_sorted, key=itemgetter('name')) 

For completeness (as pointed out in comments by fitzgeraldsteele), add reverse=True to sort descending

newlist = sorted(l, key=itemgetter('name'), reverse=True)

Answered By: Mario

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