Question

I have an outermost list which contains a monthly total count of different items in this format. Every month has the same items.

big_list = [
  [
    (20, 'Item A', 'Jan'),
    (30, 'Item B', 'Jan'),
    (12, 'Item C', 'Jan'),
  ],
  [
    (22, 'Item A', 'Feb'),
    (34, 'Item B', 'Feb'),
    (15, 'Item C', 'Feb'),
  ],

  .... # until 'Dec'
]

And I want to sort this list based on the total number of item counts throughout a year. (The sum of the first field in the tuple of a particular item throughout the year). For instance, if Item C has the most counts in the two months followed by Item A and Item B, the end result would be

[
  [
    (12, 'Item C', 'Jan'),
    (20, 'Item A', 'Jan'),
    (30, 'Item B', 'Jan'),
  ],
  [
    (15, 'Item C', 'Feb'),
    (22, 'Item A', 'Feb'),
    (34, 'Item B', 'Feb'),
  ],

  ... # until 'Dec'
]
# Item C = 12 + 15 = 27
# Item A = 20 + 22 = 42
# Item B = 30 + 34 = 64

How can I achieve this? Any help or enlightenment would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

big_list = [
  [
    (20, 'Item A', 'Jan'),
    (30, 'Item B', 'Jan'),
    (12, 'Item C', 'Jan'),
  ],
  [
    (22, 'Item A', 'Feb'),
    (34, 'Item B', 'Feb'),
    (15, 'Item C', 'Feb'),
  ]]

s = {}
for l in big_list:
    for m in l:
        s[m[1]] = s.get(m[1], 0) + m[0]

gives us s – the sums we want to use to sort: {'Item A': 42, 'Item B': 64, 'Item C': 27}

And finally:

for l in big_list:
    l.sort(key=lambda x: s[x[1]])

changes big_list to:

[[(12, 'Item C', 'Jan'), (20, 'Item A', 'Jan'), (30, 'Item B', 'Jan')],
 [(15, 'Item C', 'Feb'), (22, 'Item A', 'Feb'), (34, 'Item B', 'Feb')]]

This solution works for lists within months in any order and also if some item does not appear in some month.