Question

Ok, here’s what I’m trying to do… I know that itemgetter() sort could to alphabetical sort easy, but if I have something like this:

[{‘Name’:’TOTAL’, ‘Rank’:100},
{‘Name’:’Woo Company’, ‘Rank’:15},
{‘Name’:’ABC Company’, ‘Rank’:20}]

And I want it sorted alphabetically (by Name) + include the condition that the one with Name:’TOTAL’ should be listed last in the sequence, like this:

[{‘Name’:’ABC Company’, ‘Rank’:20},
{‘Name’:’Woo Company’, ‘Rank’:15},
{‘Name’:’TOTAL’, ‘Rank’:100}]

How would I do that?

Answer 1

The best approach here is to decorate the sort key… Python will sort a tuple by the tuple components in order, so build a tuple key with your sorting criteria:

sorted(list_of_dicts, key=lambda d: (d['Name'] == 'TOTAL', d['Name'].lower()))

This results in a sort key of:

• (True, ‘total’) for {‘Name’: ‘TOTAL’, ‘Rank’: 100}
• (False, ‘woo company’) for {‘Name’: ‘Woo Company’, ‘Rank’: 15}
• (False, ‘abc company’) for {‘Name’: ‘ABC Company’, ‘Rank’: 20}

Since False sorts earlier than True, the ones whose names aren’t TOTAL will end up together, then be sorted alphabetically, and TOTAL will end up at the end.