Sort Go map values by keys

Question

When iterating through the returned map in the code, returned by the topic function, the keys are not appearing in order.

How can I get the keys to be in order / sor

Answer 1

In reply to James Craig Burley's answer. In order to make a clean and re-usable design, one might choose for a more object oriented approach. This way methods can be safely bound to the types of the specified map. To me this approach feels cleaner and organized.

Example:

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "sort"
)

type myIntMap map[int]string

func (m myIntMap) sort() (index []int) {
    for k, _ := range m {
        index = append(index, k)
    }
    sort.Ints(index)
    return
}

func main() {
    m := myIntMap{
        1:  "one",
        11: "eleven",
        3:  "three",
    }
    for _, k := range m.sort() {
        fmt.Println(m[k])
    }
}

Extended playground example with multiple map types.

Important note

In all cases, the map and the sorted slice are decoupled from the moment the for loop over the map range is finished. Meaning that, if the map gets modified after the sorting logic, but before you use it, you can get into trouble. (Not thread / Go routine safe). If there is a change of parallel Map write access, you'll need to use a mutex around the writes and the sorted for loop.

mutex.Lock()
for _, k := range m.sort() {
    fmt.Println(m[k])
}
mutex.Unlock()