Python sorting dictionary keys into a list by values

Question

I have a dictionary say:

Red : 2
Blue : 1
Yellow : 9
Black : 9
White : 5

I need to generate a list of keys sorted by the values:

[Blue, Red, White, Black, Yellow]

Is there a neatish way of doing this?

I have had a look around, and there are similar questions, but they all seem to be sorting values or keys only.

For what it's worth, I don't consider the question marked "duplicate" to be a duplicate at all. Luckily you got a good answer before that happened. — Mark Ransom, Nov 19 '14 at 16:31
Using the duplicate, you get `[('Blue', 1), ('Red', 2), ('White', 5), ('Black', 9)]`. With `[y for y,_ in sorted(x.items(), key=operator.itemgetter(1))]` you get what you want. — fredtantini, Nov 19 '14 at 16:33

Mazdak · Accepted Answer · 2014-11-19T16:28:49.063

2

You can use sorted function with dict.get as its key :

sorted(your_dictionary.keys(), key=your_dictionary.get)

or as says in comments you can just use :

sorted(your_dictionary, key=your_dictionary.get)

edited Nov 19 '14 at 16:28

answered Nov 19 '14 at 16:19

Mazdak

But this doesnt use the values? – user1546650 Nov 19 '14 at 16:20
2

you can just do `sorted(the_dict,key=the_dict.get)` – Joran Beasley Nov 19 '14 at 16:21
Thanks :) This was surprisingly hard to find. – user1546650 Nov 19 '14 at 16:35

1 Answers1