Sorting Dictionary by value of key within a key

Question

I want to sort a dictionary by descending order by a value of a key within a key. In my sample, I want to sort by little 'c'

Here is what I looks like now:

sample = {'A': {'a':22, 'b':24, 'c':80},
 'B': {'a':12, 'b':13, 'c':55},
 'C': {'a':44, 'b':33, 'c':99}
}

and here is my desired output:

sample = {'C': {'a':44, 'b':33, 'c':99},
 'A': {'a':22, 'b':24, 'c':80},
 'B': {'a':12, 'b':13, 'c':55}
}

I tried this bit of code by clearly its not right:

newdict = {}
for key, value in sorted(sample.items(), key=lambda item: item['c'], reverse=True):
     newdict[key] = value
sample = newdict

Thank you all for the help in solving this little puzzle!

SuperStormer · Accepted Answer · 2021-05-19 14:34:17Z

1

You're close, the key function should be:

key=lambda item: item[1]['c']

Rewritten to be more Pythonic:

sample = dict(sorted(sample.items(), key=lambda item: item[1]['c'], reverse=True))

(The dict constructor can take an iterable of item tuples)

answered May 19, 2021 at 14:34

SuperStormer

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1 Comment

you sir, are brilliant