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

Question

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},         


        

Answer 1

If you do not need the original list of dictionaries, you could modify it in-place with sort() method using a custom key function.

Key function:

def get_name(d):
    """ Return the value of a key in a dictionary. """

    return d["name"]

The list to be sorted:

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

Sorting it in-place:

data_one.sort(key=get_name)

If you need the original list, call the sorted() function passing it the list and the key function, then assign the returned sorted list to a new variable:

data_two = [{'name': 'Homer', 'age': 39}, {'name': 'Bart', 'age': 10}]
new_data = sorted(data_two, key=get_name)

Printing data_one and new_data.

>>> print(data_one)
[{'name': 'Bart', 'age': 10}, {'name': 'Homer', 'age': 39}]
>>> print(new_data)
[{'name': 'Bart', 'age': 10}, {'name': 'Homer', 'age': 39}]