Sort a Dictionary in Python by Values

Python allows dictionaries to be sorted using the built-in sorted() function. In this article, we will explore different ways to sort a dictionary in Python by its values.

Sort a Dictionary Using itemgetter() method

When we use the sorted() function along with the itemgetter() method of the operator module, the dictionary will be sorted by its values. The itemgetter() function returns a callable object that fetches an item from its operand using the provided index.

Example

Following is an example that shows how to sort a dictionary by its values using itemgetter() along with the sorted() function -

from operator import itemgetter

dictionary = {
   'b': 2,
   'a': 1,
   'd': 4,
   'c': 3
}
# Sorting by values using itemgetter
sorted_dict = dict(sorted(dictionary.items(), key=itemgetter(1)))

print(sorted_dict)

Following is the output of the above program -

{'a': 1, 'b': 2, 'c': 3, 'd': 4}

Sort a Dictionary Using Lambda Function

We can also sort a dictionary by values using the sorted() function with a lambda expression as the key.

Example

Below is an example that shows how to sort a dictionary by values using a lambda function -

dictionary = {
   'b': 2,
   'a': 1,
   'd': 4,
   'c': 3
}

# Sorting dictionary by values using lambda
sorted_dict = dict(sorted(dictionary.items(), key=lambda item: item[1]))

print(sorted_dict)

Below is the output of the above program -

{'a': 1, 'b': 2, 'c': 3, 'd': 4}

Sorting a Dictionary using OrderedDict

The OrderedDict() method from the collections module can be used to maintain the sorted order of dictionary elements based on their values.

Example

Here is an example that uses OrderedDict() to store the sorted dictionary -

from collections import OrderedDict

dictionary = {
   'b': 2,
   'a': 1,
   'd': 4,
   'c': 3
}

# Sorting by values and storing in OrderedDict
sorted_dict = OrderedDict(sorted(dictionary.items(), key=lambda item: item[1]))

print(sorted_dict)

Here is the output of the above program -

OrderedDict({'a': 1, 'b': 2, 'c': 3, 'd': 4})