In List of Dicts, find min() value of a common Dict field

python list dictionary max min
Hank Fay picture Hank Fay · Mar 16, 2011 · Viewed 67.5k times · Source

I have a list of dictionaries like so:

[{'price': 99, 'barcode': '2342355'}, {'price': 88, 'barcode': '2345566'}]

I want to find the min() and max() prices. Now, I can sort this easily enough using a key with a lambda expression (as found in another SO article), so if there is no other way I'm not stuck. However, from what I've seen there is almost always a direct way in Python, so this is an opportunity for me to learn a bit more.

Answer

Hugh Bothwell picture Hugh Bothwell · Mar 16, 2011 
lst = [{'price': 99, 'barcode': '2342355'}, {'price': 88, 'barcode': '2345566'}]

maxPricedItem = max(lst, key=lambda x:x['price'])
minPricedItem = min(lst, key=lambda x:x['price'])

This tells you not just what the max price is but also which item is most expensive.

Related questions

How to return dictionary keys as a list in Python?

In Python 2.7, I could get dictionary keys, values, or items as a list: >>> newdict = {1:0, 2:0, 3:0} >>> newdict.keys() [1, 2, 3] Now, in Python >= 3.3, I get something like this: >>> newdict.keys() dict_keys([1, 2, 3]) So, I …

Read More
How can I get list of values from dict?

How can I get a list of the values in a dict in Python? In Java, getting the values of a Map as a List is as easy as doing list = map.values();. I'm wondering if there is a similarly …

Read More
Convert two lists into a dictionary

Imagine that you have: keys = ['name', 'age', 'food'] values = ['Monty', 42, 'spam'] What is the simplest way to produce the following dictionary? a_dict = {'name' : 'Monty', 'age' : 42, 'food' : 'spam'}

Read More