Python prettytable Sort by Multiple Columns

Question

I'm using PrettyTable to print data to the terminal in a nice table format. It's pretty easy to print it ordered by a single column.

from prettytable import PrettyTable

table = PrettyTable(["Name", "Grade"])
table.add_row(["Joe", 90])
table.add_row(["Sally", 100])
print table.get_string(sortby="Grade", reversesort=True)

>> Table with Sally on top, because her score is highest.

My trouble is I want to sort on two columns. In this surrogate case, I would want to print by grade, and then alphabetically if there was a tie.

table = PrettyTable(["Name", "Grade"])
table.add_row(["Joe", 90])
table.add_row(["Sally", 100])
table.add_row(["Bill", 90])
print table.get_string(sortby=("Grade","Name"), reversesort=True)

>> Doesn't work

The docs say that sort_key will allow me to write a function to accomplish this, but I haven't seen an actual implementation to work off.

alecxe · Accepted Answer · 2016-05-24T20:50:19.940

13

You can call operator.itemgetter() as a sort_key value. Note that sortby still needs to be given for the sort_key to be applied:

import operator
from prettytable import PrettyTable


table = PrettyTable(["Name", "Grade"])
table.add_row(["Joe", 90])
table.add_row(["Sally", 100])
table.add_row(["Bill", 90])
table.add_row(["Alice", 90])
print table.get_string(sort_key=operator.itemgetter(1, 0), sortby="Grade")

Prints:

+-------+-------+
|  Name | Grade |
+-------+-------+
| Alice |   90  |
|  Bill |   90  |
|  Joe  |   90  |
| Sally |  100  |
+-------+-------+

edited May 24 '16 at 20:50

answered May 24 '16 at 20:44

alecxe

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Any thoughts on how to apply reversesort to one column? ie, produce Sally, Alice, Bill, Joe, since I've reversesorted the Grade column. – codeMonkey May 25 '16 at 16:32
Hey @alecxe thanks for answer it helps my case too, just wondering how to sort "Grade" in descending order I tried all combination like (0,1) (1,1) but non of them seems to work – Ahsan Naseem Sep 13 '17 at 07:19
1

@AhsanNaseem use `reverse = True` arg – AwesomeSam Mar 28 '21 at 06:45
Not working for me using the `sort_key` – Nam G VU Sep 28 '21 at 12:44
`sort_key=operator.imagegetter(-1,0)` will give grades in descending order with ties sorted alphabetically by name – WombatPM Jan 08 '23 at 09:20

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 09 '21 at 08:50

from prettytable import PrettyTable
    
x = PrettyTable()
x.field_names = ["City name", "Area", "Population", "Annual Rainfall"]

x.add_row(["Adelaide", 1295, 1158259, 600.5])
x.add_row(["Brisbane", 5905, 1857594, 1146.4])
x.add_row(["Darwin", 112, 120900, 1714.7])
x.add_row(["Hobart", 1357, 205556, 619.5])
x.add_row(["Sydney", 2058, 4336374, 1214.8])
x.add_row(["Melbourne", 1566, 3806092, 646.9])
x.add_row(["Perth", 5386, 1554769, 869.4])

print("Table sorted by population:")
x.sortby = "Population"
print(x)

Source: https://zetcode.com/python/prettytable/

This fails to answer the question, the question is specifically asking about 2 column sorting. — Ryan Leach, Nov 16 '22 at 17:11

Python prettytable Sort by Multiple Columns

2 Answers2