How do I sort a list of dictionaries by a value of the dictionary?

Question

I have a list of dictionaries and want each item to be sorted by a specific value.

Take into consideration the list:

[{\'name\':\'Homer\', \'age\':39},         


        

Answer 1

It may look cleaner using a key instead a cmp:

newlist = sorted(list_to_be_sorted, key=lambda k: k['name']) 

or as J.F.Sebastian and others suggested,

from operator import itemgetter
newlist = sorted(list_to_be_sorted, key=itemgetter('name')) 

For completeness (as pointed out in comments by fitzgeraldsteele), add reverse=True to sort descending

newlist = sorted(l, key=itemgetter('name'), reverse=True)