Sort list of dictionaries by another list

Question

Sort list of dictionaries by another list. I have got list with dictionaries (IN) and I want to sort this by another list (sortValue).

Answer 1

Build a dictionary that maps IDs to the dictionary with that ID and then go through your sortValue list and pick the dictionary for each ID value:

id2dict = dict((d['id'], d) for d in IN)
OUT = [id2dict[x] for x in sortValue]

Answer 2

You can also use the key parameter of the sorted function. In your case, you want the index of sortValue for the id of each item on the list:

>>> pprint(sorted(IN,key=lambda x:sortValue.index(x['id'])))
[{'id': 'b', 'val': 'Value', 'val1': 'Value1'},
 {'id': 'c', 'val': 'Value', 'val1': 'Value1'},
 {'id': 'a', 'val': 'Value', 'val1': 'Value1'}]

More on sorting with python on its wiki.