How to make heapq evaluate the heap off of a specific attribute?

Question

I wish to hold a heap of objects, not just numbers. They will have an integer attribute in them that the heap can sort by. The easiest way to use heaps in python is heapq,

Answer 1

heapq sorts objects the same way list.sort does, so just define a method __cmp__() within your class definition, which will compare itself to another instance of the same class:

def __cmp__(self, other):
    return cmp(self.intAttribute, other.intAttribute)

Works in Python 2.x.

In 3.x use:

def __lt__(self, other):
    return self.intAttribute < other.intAttribute