The sorted() function in Python provdies a flexible way to sort dictionaries. It accepts three parameters: iterable, key, and reverse.

• iterable: The collection to sort, such as dict.items() or dict.keys().
• key: A function that determines which part of the elements should be used for comparison.
• reverse: Controls sorting order. When set to True, results are in descending order; otherwise, ascending (default).

Sorting by Key

To sort dictionary keys alphabeticlaly:

data = {'lilee': 25, 'age': 24, 'phone': 12}
result = sorted(data.keys())
print(result)
# Output: ['age', 'lilee', 'phone']

For reverse alphabetical order:

result = sorted(data.keys(), reverse=True)
print(result)
# Output: ['phone', 'lilee', 'age']

Sorting by Value

There are multiple approaches to sort based on dictionary values.

Using Lambda Function

records = {'lilee': 25, 'wangyan': 21, 'liqun': 32, 'age': 19}

# Ascending order
sorted_asc = sorted(records.items(), key=lambda x: x[1])
print(sorted_asc)
# Output: [('age', 19), ('wangyan', 21), ('lilee', 25), ('liqun', 32)]

# Descending order
sorted_desc = sorted(records.items(), key=lambda x: x[1], reverse=True)
print(sorted_desc)
# Output: [('liqun', 32), ('lilee', 25), ('wangyan', 21), ('age', 19)]

Using operator.itemgetter

import operator

sorted_items = sorted(records.items(), key=operator.itemgetter(1))
print(sorted_items)
# Output: [('age', 19), ('wangyan', 21), ('lilee', 25), ('liqun', 32)]

Packing Keys and Values into Tuples

tuples_list = list(zip(records.keys(), records.values()))
sorted_tuples = sorted(tuples_list)
print(sorted_tuples)
# Output: [('age', 19), ('wangyan', 21), ('lilee', 25), ('liqun', 32)]

Extracting Top N Entries

To retrieve the top entries after sorting:

sample_data = {
    "item_a": 5,
    "item_b": 6,
    "item_c": 4,
    "item_d": 3,
}

# Sort by value
sorted_dict = dict(sorted(sample_data.items(), key=lambda pair: pair[1]))
print(sorted_dict)

# Extract first two items
limit = 2
counter = 0
for k, v in sorted_dict.items():
    if counter >= limit:
        break
    print(f"{k}: {v}")
    counter += 1