How to sort a list of dictionaries of dictionaries by value

Question

I have a list of dicts of dicts like this:

mydic = [{'name':'a', 'loc':{'locname':'z'}, 'id':{'value':'1'}},{'name':'b', 'loc':{'locname':'o'}, 'id':{'value':'2'}}]

How do I sort it by locname? I should get this:

mydic_sorted = [{'name':'b', 'loc':{'locname':'o'}, 'id':{'value':'2'}}, {'name':'a', 'loc':{'locname':'z'}, 'id':{'value':'1'}}]

The biggest question is, how can one submit a question like this without noticing all the duplicates in the list that essentially have the title identical to the title of this question. — Antti Haapala -- Слава Україні, Feb 15 '15 at 20:13

score 4 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

You can by using a lambda function as a key argument to the function

>>> mydic = [{'name':'a', 'loc':{'locname':'z'}, 'id':{'value':'1'}},{'name':'b', 'loc':{'locname':'o'}, 'id':{'value':'2'}}]
>>> sorted(mydic,key = lambda x:x['loc']['locname'])
[{'loc': {'locname': 'o'}, 'name': 'b', 'id': {'value': '2'}}, {'loc': {'locname': 'z'}, 'name': 'a', 'id': {'value': '1'}}]

Ref: The docs

sorted(iterable[, cmp[, key[, reverse]]])

key specifies a function of one argument that is used to extract a comparison key from each list element: key=str.lower. The default value is None (compare the elements directly).

thnx for your quick answer :) – user3241376 Feb 15 '15 at 21:35 — user3241376, Feb 15 '15 at 21:35

How to sort a list of dictionaries of dictionaries by value

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