Pythonic way to sorting list of namedtuples by field name

python sorting namedtuple field-names
Nick picture Nick · Aug 23, 2012 · Viewed 28.7k times · Source

I want to sort a list of named tuples without having to remember the index of the fieldname. My solution seems rather awkward and was hoping someone would have a more elegant solution.

from operator import itemgetter
from collections import namedtuple

Person = namedtuple('Person', 'name age score')
seq = [
    Person(name='nick', age=23, score=100),
    Person(name='bob', age=25, score=200),
]

# sort list by name
print(sorted(seq, key=itemgetter(Person._fields.index('name'))))
# sort list by age
print(sorted(seq, key=itemgetter(Person._fields.index('age'))))

Thanks, Nick

Answer

jamylak picture jamylak · Aug 23, 2012 
from operator import attrgetter
from collections import namedtuple

Person = namedtuple('Person', 'name age score')
seq = [Person(name='nick', age=23, score=100),
       Person(name='bob', age=25, score=200)]

Sort list by name

sorted(seq, key=attrgetter('name'))

Sort list by age

sorted(seq, key=attrgetter('age'))

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