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list comprehension to build a nested dictionary from a list of tuples

I have data (counts) indexed by user_id and analysis_type_id obtained from a database. It's a list of 3-tuple. Sample data:
counts = [(4, 1, 4), (3, 5, 4), (2, 10, 4), (2, 10, 5)]
where the first item of each tuple is the count, the second the analysis_type_id, and the last the user_id.
I'd like to place that into a dictionary, so i can retrieve the counts quickly: given a user_id and analysis_type_id. It would have to be a two-level dictionary. Is there any better structure?
To construct the two-level dictionary "by hand", I would code:
dict = {4:{1:4,5:3,10:2},5:{10:2}}
Where user_id is the first dict key level, analysis_type_id is the second (sub-) key, and the count is the value inside the dict.
How would I create the "double-depth" in dict keys through list comprehension?
Or do I need to resort to a nested for-loop, where I first iterate through unique user_id values, then find matching analysis_type_id and fill in the counts ... one-at-a-time into the dict?

Two Tuple Keys
I would suggest abandoning the idea of nesting dictionaries and simply use two tuples as the keys directly. Like so:
d = { (user_id, analysis_type_id): count for count, analysis_type_id, user_id in counts}
The dictionary is a hash table. In python, each two tuple has a single hash value (not two hash values) and thus each two tuple is looked up based on its (relatively) unique hash. Therefore this is faster (2x faster, most of the time) than looking up the hash of TWO separate keys (first the user_id, then the analysis_type_id).
However, beware of premature optimization. Unless you're doing millions of lookups, the increase in performance of the flat dict is unlikely to matter. The real reason to favor the use of the two tuple here is that the syntax and readability of a two tuple solution is far superior than other solutions- that is, assuming the vast majority of the time you will be wanting to access items based on a pair of values and not groups of items based on a single value.
Consider Using a namedtuple
It may be convenient to create a named tuple for storing those keys. Do that this way:
from collections import namedtuple
IdPair = namedtuple("IdPair", "user_id, analysis_type_id")
Then use it in your dictionary comprehension:
d = { IdPair(user_id, analysis_type_id): count for count, analysis_type_id, user_id in counts}
And access a count you're interested in like this:
somepair = IdPair(user_id = 4, analysis_type_id = 1)
d[somepair]
The reason this is sometimes useful is you can do things like this:
user_id = somepair.user_id # very nice syntax
Some Other Useful Options
One downside of the above solution is the case in which your lookup fails. In that case, you will only get a traceback like the following:
>>> d[IdPair(0,0)]
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
KeyError: IdPair(user_id=0, analysis_type_id=0)
This isn't very helpful; was it the user_id that was unmatched, or the analysis_type_id, or both?
You can create a better tool for yourself by creating your own dict type that gives you a nice traceback with more information. It might look something like this:
class CountsDict(dict):
"""A dict for storing IdPair keys and count values as integers.
Provides more detailed traceback information than a regular dict.
"""
def __getitem__(self, k):
try:
return super().__getitem__(k)
except KeyError as exc:
raise self._handle_bad_key(k, exc) from exc
def _handle_bad_key(self, k, exc):
"""Provides a custom exception when a bad key is given."""
try:
user_id, analysis_type_id = k
except:
return exc
has_u_id = next((True for u_id, _ in self if u_id==user_id), False)
has_at_id = next((True for _, at_id in self if at_id==analysis_type_id), False)
exc_lookup = {(False, False):KeyError(f"CountsDict missing pair: {k}"),
(True, False):KeyError(f"CountsDict missing analysis_type_id: "
f"{analysis_type_id}"),
(False, True):KeyError(f"CountsDict missing user_id: {user_id}")}
return exc_lookup[(user_id, analysis_type_id)]
Use it just like a regular dict.
However, it may make MORE sense to simply add new pairs to your dict (with a count of zero) when you try to access a missing pair. If this is the case, I'd use a defaultdict and have it set the count to zero (using the default value of int as the factory function) when a missing key is accessed. Like so:
from collections import defaultdict
my_dict = defaultdict(default_factory=int,
((user_id, analysis_type_id), count) for count, analysis_type_id, user_id in counts))
Now if you attempt to access a key that is missing, the count will be set to zero. However, one problem with this method is that ALL keys will be set to zero:
value = my_dict['I'm not a two tuple, sucka!!!!'] # <-- will be added to my_dict
To prevent this, we go back to the idea of making a CountsDict, except in this case, your special dict will be a subclass of defaultdict. However, unlike a regular defaultdict, it will check to make sure the key is a valid kind before it is added. And as a bonus, we can make sure ANY two tuple that is added as a key becomes an IdPair.
from collections import defaultdict
class CountsDict(defaultdict):
"""A dict for storing IdPair keys and count values as integers.
Missing two-tuple keys are converted to an IdPair. Invalid keys raise a KeyError.
"""
def __getitem__(self, k):
try:
user_id, analysis_type_id = k
except:
raise KeyError(f"The provided key {k!r} is not a valid key.")
else:
# convert two tuple to an IdPair if it was not already
k = IdPair(user_id, analysis_type_id)
return super().__getitem__(k)
Use it just like the regular defaultdict:
my_dict = CountsDict(default_factory=int,
((user_id, analysis_type_id), count) for count, analysis_type_id, user_id in counts))
NOTE: In the above I have not made it so that two tuple keys are converted to IdPairs upon instance creation (because __setitem__ is not utilized during instance creation). To create this functionality, we would also need to implement an override of the __init__ method.
Wrap Up
Out of all of these, the more useful option depends entirely on your use case.

The most readable solution utilizes a defaultdict which saves you nested loops and bumpy checking if keys already exist:
from collections import defaultdict
dct = defaultdict(dict) # do not shadow the built-in 'dict'
for x, y, z in counts:
dct[z][y] = x
dct
# defaultdict(dict, {4: {1: 4, 5: 3, 10: 2}, 5: {10: 2}})
If you really want a one-liner comprehension you can use itertools.groupby and this clunkiness:
from itertools import groupby
dct = {k: {y: x for x, y, _ in g} for k, g in groupby(sorted(counts, key=lambda c: c[2]), key=lambda c: c[2])}
If your initial data is already sorted by user_id, you can save yourself the sorting.

This is a good use for the defaultdict object. You can create a defaultdict whose elements are always dicts. Then you can just stuff the counts into the right dicts, like this:
from collections import defaultdict
counts = [(4, 1, 4), (3, 5, 4), (2, 10, 4), (2, 10, 5)]
dct = defaultdict(dict)
for count, analysis_type_id, user_id in counts:
dct[user_id][analysis_type_id]=count
dct
# defaultdict(dict, {4: {1: 4, 5: 3, 10: 2}, 5: {10: 2}})
# if you want a 'normal' dict, you can finish with this:
dct = dict(dct)
Or you can just use standard dicts with setdefault:
counts = [(4, 1, 4), (3, 5, 4), (2, 10, 4), (2, 10, 5)]
dct = dict()
for count, analysis_type_id, user_id in counts:
dct.setdefault(user_id, dict())
dct[user_id][analysis_type_id]=count
dct
# {4: {1: 4, 5: 3, 10: 2}, 5: {10: 2}}
I don't think you can do this neatly with a list comprehension, but there's no need to be afraid of a for-loop for this kind of thing.

you could use the following logic. It's no need to import any package, just we should use for loops properly.
counts = [(4, 1, 4), (3, 5, 4), (2, 10, 4), (2, 10, 5)]
dct = {x[2]:{y[1]:y[0] for y in counts if x[2] == y[2]} for x in counts }
"""output will be {4: {1: 4, 5: 3, 10: 2}, 5: {10: 2}} """

You can list comprehension for nested loops with condition and use one or more of them for elements selections:
# create dict with tuples
line_dict = {str(nest_list[0]) : nest_list[1:] for nest_list in nest_lists for elem in nest_list if elem== nest_list[0]}
print(line_dict)
# create dict with list
line_dict1 = {str(nest_list[0]) list(nest_list[1:]) for nest_list in nest_lists for elem in nest_list if elem== nest_list[0]}
print(line_dict1)
Example: nest_lists = [("a","aa","aaa","aaaa"), ("b","bb","bbb","bbbb") ("c","cc","ccc","cccc"), ("d","dd","ddd","dddd")]
Output: {'a': ('aa', 'aaa', 'aaaa'), 'b': ('bb', 'bbb', 'bbbb'), 'c': ('cc', 'ccc', 'cccc'), 'd': ('dd', 'ddd', 'dddd')}, {'a': ['aa', 'aaa', 'aaaa'], 'b': ['bb', 'bbb', 'bbbb'], 'c': ['cc', 'ccc', 'cccc'], 'd': ['dd', 'ddd', 'dddd']}

Python Ranking Dictionary Return Rank

I have a python dictionary:
x = {'a':10.1,'b':2,'c':5}
How do I go about ranking and returning the rank value? Like getting back:
res = {'a':1,c':2,'b':3}
Thanks
Edit:
I am not trying to sort as that can be done via sorted function in python. I was more thinking about getting the rank values from highest to smallest...so replacing the dictionary values by their position after sorting. 1 means highest and 3 means lowest.

If I understand correctly, you can simply use sorted to get the ordering, and then enumerate to number them:
>>> x = {'a':10.1, 'b':2, 'c':5}
>>> sorted(x, key=x.get, reverse=True)
['a', 'c', 'b']
>>> {key: rank for rank, key in enumerate(sorted(x, key=x.get, reverse=True), 1)}
{'b': 3, 'c': 2, 'a': 1}
Note that this assumes that the ranks are unambiguous. If you have ties, the rank order among the tied keys will be arbitrary. It's easy to handle that too using similar methods, for example if you wanted all the tied keys to have the same rank. We have
>>> x = {'a':10.1, 'b':2, 'c': 5, 'd': 5}
>>> {key: rank for rank, key in enumerate(sorted(x, key=x.get, reverse=True), 1)}
{'a': 1, 'b': 4, 'd': 3, 'c': 2}
but
>>> r = {key: rank for rank, key in enumerate(sorted(set(x.values()), reverse=True), 1)}
>>> {k: r[v] for k,v in x.items()}
{'a': 1, 'b': 3, 'd': 2, 'c': 2}

Using scipy.stats.rankdata:
[ins] In [55]: from scipy.stats import rankdata
[ins] In [56]: x = {'a':10.1, 'b':2, 'c': 5, 'd': 5}
[ins] In [57]: dict(zip(x.keys(), rankdata([-i for i in x.values()], method='min')))
Out[57]: {'a': 1, 'b': 4, 'c': 2, 'd': 2}
[ins] In [58]: dict(zip(x.keys(), rankdata([-i for i in x.values()], method='max')))
Out[58]: {'a': 1, 'b': 4, 'c': 3, 'd': 3}
#beta, #DSM scipy.stats.rankdata has some other 'methods' for ties also that may be more appropriate to what you are wanting to do with ties.

First sort by value in the dict, then assign ranks. Make sure you sort reversed, and then recreate the dict with the ranks.
from the previous answer :
import operator
x={'a':10.1,'b':2,'c':5}
sorted_x = sorted(x.items(), key=operator.itemgetter(1), reversed=True)
out_dict = {}
for idx, (key, _) in enumerate(sorted_x):
out_dict[key] = idx + 1
print out_dict

One way would be to examine the dictionary for the largest value, then remove it, while building a new dictionary:
my_dict = x = {'a':10.1,'b':2,'c':5}
i = 1
new_dict ={}
while len(my_dict) > 0:
my_biggest_key = max(my_dict, key=my_dict.get)
new_dict[my_biggest_key] = i
my_dict.pop(my_biggest_key)
i += 1
print new_dict

In [23]: from collections import OrderedDict
In [24]: mydict=dict([(j,i) for i, j in enumerate(x.keys(),1)])
In [28]: sorted_dict = sorted(mydict.items(), key=itemgetter(1))
In [29]: sorted_dict
Out[29]: [('a', 1), ('c', 2), ('b', 3)]
In [35]: OrderedDict(sorted_dict)
Out[35]: OrderedDict([('a', 1), ('c', 2), ('b', 3)])

You could do like this,
>>> x = {'a':10.1,'b':2,'c':5}
>>> m = {}
>>> k = 0
>>> for i in dict(sorted(x.items(), key=lambda k: k[1], reverse=True)):
k += 1
m[i] = k
>>> m
{'a': 1, 'c': 2, 'b': 3}

Pretty simple sort-of simple but kind of complex one-liner.
{key[0]:1 + value for value, key in enumerate(
sorted(d.iteritems(),
key=lambda x: x[1],
reverse=True))}
Let me walk you through it.
We use enumerate to give us a natural ordering of elements, which is zero-based. Simply using enumerate(d.iteritems()) will generate a list of tuples that contain an integer, then the tuple which contains a key:value pair from the original dictionary.
We sort the list so that it appears in order from highest to lowest.
We want to treat the value as the enumerated value (that is, we want 0 to be a value for 'a' if there's only one occurrence (and I'll get to normalizing that in a bit), and so forth), and we want the key to be the actual key from the dictionary. So here, we swap the order in which we're binding the two values.
When it comes time to extract the actual key, it's still in tuple form - it appears as ('a', 0), so we want to only get the first element from that. key[0] accomplishes that.
When we want to get the actual value, we normalize the ranking of it so that it's 1-based instead of zero-based, so we add 1 to value.

Using pandas:
import pandas as pd
x = {'a':10.1,'b':2,'c':5}
res = dict(zip(x.keys(), pd.Series(x.values()).rank().tolist()))

Python: Iterate alphabetically over OrderedDict

In a script I have an OrderedDict groups that gets fed key/value pairs alphabetically.
In another part of the script, I'm checking against files that have the same same as key like so:
for (key, value) in groups.items():
file = open(key, 'r')
# do stuff
Stuff happens just fine, part of which is printing a status line for each file, but how can I get Python to iterate through groups alphabetically, or at least numerically as they are ordered (since they are being entered in alphabetical order anyways)?

The whole point of an OrderedDict is that you can iterate through it normally in the order that keys were entered:
>>> from collections import OrderedDict
>>> d = OrderedDict()
>>> d[1] = 2
>>> d[0] = 3
>>> d[9] = 2
>>> for k, v in d.items():
print(k, v)
(1, 2)
(0, 3)
(9, 2)
Just make sure you don't feed OrderedDict(...) a dictionary to initialize it or it starts off unordered.

If all you want to do is iterate through a dictionary in order of the keys, you can use a regular dictionary and sorted():
>>> d = dict(s=5,g=4,a=6,j=10)
>>> d
{'g': 4, 's': 5, 'j': 10, 'a': 6}
>>> for k in sorted(d):
print(k, ':', d[k])
a : 6
g : 4
j : 10
s : 5
>>>
(pardon the python3 print())
If you really want to stick with the ordered dict, then read the documentation which shows an example of reordering an OrderedDict:
>>> # regular unsorted dictionary
>>> d = {'banana': 3, 'apple':4, 'pear': 1, 'orange': 2}
>>> # dictionary sorted by key
>>> OrderedDict(sorted(d.items(), key=lambda t: t[0]))
OrderedDict([('apple', 4), ('banana', 3), ('orange', 2), ('pear', 1)])
If you really entered them into an OrderedDict alphabetically in the first place, then I'm not sure why you're having trouble.

Return first N key:value pairs from dict

Consider the following dictionary, d:
d = {'a': 3, 'b': 2, 'c': 3, 'd': 4, 'e': 5}
I want to return the first N key:value pairs from d (N <= 4 in this case). What is the most efficient method of doing this?

There's no such thing a the "first n" keys because a dict doesn't remember which keys were inserted first.
You can get any n key-value pairs though:
n_items = take(n, d.items())
This uses the implementation of take from the itertools recipes:
from itertools import islice
def take(n, iterable):
"""Return the first n items of the iterable as a list."""
return list(islice(iterable, n))
See it working online: ideone
For Python < 3.6
n_items = take(n, d.iteritems())

A very efficient way to retrieve anything is to combine list or dictionary comprehensions with slicing. If you don't need to order the items (you just want n random pairs), you can use a dictionary comprehension like this:
# Python 2
first2pairs = {k: mydict[k] for k in mydict.keys()[:2]}
# Python 3
first2pairs = {k: mydict[k] for k in list(mydict)[:2]}
Generally a comprehension like this is always faster to run than the equivalent "for x in y" loop. Also, by using .keys() to make a list of the dictionary keys and slicing that list you avoid 'touching' any unnecessary keys when you build the new dictionary.
If you don't need the keys (only the values) you can use a list comprehension:
first2vals = [v for v in mydict.values()[:2]]
If you need the values sorted based on their keys, it's not much more trouble:
first2vals = [mydict[k] for k in sorted(mydict.keys())[:2]]
or if you need the keys as well:
first2pairs = {k: mydict[k] for k in sorted(mydict.keys())[:2]}

To get the top N elements from your python dictionary one can use the following line of code:
list(dictionaryName.items())[:N]
In your case you can change it to:
list(d.items())[:4]

Python's dicts are not ordered, so it's meaningless to ask for the "first N" keys.
The collections.OrderedDict class is available if that's what you need. You could efficiently get its first four elements as
import itertools
import collections
d = collections.OrderedDict((('foo', 'bar'), (1, 'a'), (2, 'b'), (3, 'c'), (4, 'd')))
x = itertools.islice(d.items(), 0, 4)
for key, value in x:
print key, value
itertools.islice allows you to lazily take a slice of elements from any iterator. If you want the result to be reusable you'd need to convert it to a list or something, like so:
x = list(itertools.islice(d.items(), 0, 4))

foo = {'a':1, 'b':2, 'c':3, 'd':4, 'e':5, 'f':6}
iterator = iter(foo.items())
for i in range(3):
print(next(iterator))
Basically, turn the view (dict_items) into an iterator, and then iterate it with next().

in py3, this will do the trick
{A:N for (A,N) in [x for x in d.items()][:4]}
{'a': 3, 'b': 2, 'c': 3, 'd': 4}

You can get dictionary items by calling .items() on the dictionary. then convert that to a list and from there get first N items as you would on any list.
below code prints first 3 items of the dictionary object
e.g.
d = {'a': 3, 'b': 2, 'c': 3, 'd': 4, 'e': 5}
first_three_items = list(d.items())[:3]
print(first_three_items)
Outputs:
[('a', 3), ('b', 2), ('c', 3)]

For Python 3.8 the correct answer should be:
import more_itertools
d = {'a': 3, 'b': 2, 'c': 3, 'd': 4, 'e': 5}
first_n = more_itertools.take(3, d.items())
print(len(first_n))
print(first_n)
Whose output is:
3
[('a', 3), ('b', 2), ('c', 3)]
After pip install more-itertools of course.

Did not see it on here. Will not be ordered but the simplest syntactically if you need to just take some elements from a dictionary.
n = 2
{key:value for key,value in d.items()[0:n]}

Were d is your dictionary and n is the printing number:
for idx, (k, v) in enumerate(d.items()):
if idx == n: break
print(k, v)
Casting your dictionary to a list can be slow.
Your dictionary may be too large and you don't need to cast all of it just for printing a few of the first.

See PEP 0265 on sorting dictionaries. Then use the aforementioned iterable code.
If you need more efficiency in the sorted key-value pairs. Use a different data structure. That is, one that maintains sorted order and the key-value associations.
E.g.
import bisect
kvlist = [('a', 1), ('b', 2), ('c', 3), ('e', 5)]
bisect.insort_left(kvlist, ('d', 4))
print kvlist # [('a', 1), ('b', 2), ('c', 3), ('d', 4), ('e', 5)]

just add an answer using zip,
{k: d[k] for k, _ in zip(d, range(n))}

This will work for python 3.8+:
d_new = {k:v for i, (k, v) in enumerate(d.items()) if i < n}

This depends on what is 'most efficient' in your case.
If you just want a semi-random sample of a huge dictionary foo, use foo.iteritems() and take as many values from it as you need, it's a lazy operation that avoids creation of an explicit list of keys or items.
If you need to sort keys first, there's no way around using something like keys = foo.keys(); keys.sort() or sorted(foo.iterkeys()), you'll have to build an explicit list of keys. Then slice or iterate through first N keys.
BTW why do you care about the 'efficient' way? Did you profile your program? If you did not, use the obvious and easy to understand way first. Chances are it will do pretty well without becoming a bottleneck.

For Python 3 and above,To select first n Pairs
n=4
firstNpairs = {k: Diction[k] for k in list(Diction.keys())[:n]}

This might not be very elegant, but works for me:
d = {'a': 3, 'b': 2, 'c': 3, 'd': 4, 'e': 5}
x= 0
for key, val in d.items():
if x == 2:
break
else:
x += 1
# Do something with the first two key-value pairs

You can approach this a number of ways. If order is important you can do this:
for key in sorted(d.keys()):
item = d.pop(key)
If order isn't a concern you can do this:
for i in range(4):
item = d.popitem()

Dictionary maintains no order , so before picking top N key value pairs lets make it sorted.
import operator
d = {'a': 3, 'b': 2, 'c': 3, 'd': 4}
d=dict(sorted(d.items(),key=operator.itemgetter(1),reverse=True))
#itemgetter(0)=sort by keys, itemgetter(1)=sort by values
Now we can do the retrieval of top 'N' elements:, using the method structure like this:
def return_top(elements,dictionary_element):
'''Takes the dictionary and the 'N' elements needed in return
'''
topers={}
for h,i in enumerate(dictionary_element):
if h<elements:
topers.update({i:dictionary_element[i]})
return topers
to get the top 2 elements then simply use this structure:
d = {'a': 3, 'b': 2, 'c': 3, 'd': 4}
d=dict(sorted(d.items(),key=operator.itemgetter(1),reverse=True))
d=return_top(2,d)
print(d)

consider a dict
d = {'a': 3, 'b': 2, 'c': 3, 'd': 4, 'e': 5}
from itertools import islice
n = 3
list(islice(d.items(),n))
islice will do the trick :)
hope it helps !

I have tried a few of the answers above and note that some of them are version dependent and do not work in version 3.7.
I also note that since 3.6 all dictionaries are ordered by the sequence in which items are inserted.
Despite dictionaries being ordered since 3.6 some of the statements you expect to work with ordered structures don't seem to work.
The answer to the OP question that worked best for me.
itr = iter(dic.items())
lst = [next(itr) for i in range(3)]

def GetNFirstItems(self):
self.dict = {f'Item{i + 1}': round(uniform(20.40, 50.50), 2) for i in range(10)}#Example Dict
self.get_items = int(input())
for self.index,self.item in zip(range(len(self.dict)),self.dict.items()):
if self.index==self.get_items:
break
else:
print(self.item,",",end="")
Unusual approach, as it gives out intense O(N) time complexity.

I like this one because no new list needs to be created, its a one liner which does exactly what you want and it works with python >= 3.8 (where dictionaries are indeed ordered, I think from python 3.6 on?):
new_d = {kv[0]:kv[1] for i, kv in enumerate(d.items()) if i <= 4}

How do I sort a dictionary by value?

This question's answers are a community effort. Edit existing answers to improve this post. It is not currently accepting new answers or interactions.
I have a dictionary of values read from two fields in a database: a string field and a numeric field. The string field is unique, so that is the key of the dictionary.
I can sort on the keys, but how can I sort based on the values?
Note: I have read Stack Overflow question here How do I sort a list of dictionaries by a value of the dictionary? and probably could change my code to have a list of dictionaries, but since I do not really need a list of dictionaries I wanted to know if there is a simpler solution to sort either in ascending or descending order.

Python 3.7+ or CPython 3.6
Dicts preserve insertion order in Python 3.7+. Same in CPython 3.6, but it's an implementation detail.
>>> x = {1: 2, 3: 4, 4: 3, 2: 1, 0: 0}
>>> {k: v for k, v in sorted(x.items(), key=lambda item: item[1])}
{0: 0, 2: 1, 1: 2, 4: 3, 3: 4}
or
>>> dict(sorted(x.items(), key=lambda item: item[1]))
{0: 0, 2: 1, 1: 2, 4: 3, 3: 4}
Older Python
It is not possible to sort a dictionary, only to get a representation of a dictionary that is sorted. Dictionaries are inherently orderless, but other types, such as lists and tuples, are not. So you need an ordered data type to represent sorted values, which will be a list—probably a list of tuples.
For instance,
import operator
x = {1: 2, 3: 4, 4: 3, 2: 1, 0: 0}
sorted_x = sorted(x.items(), key=operator.itemgetter(1))
sorted_x will be a list of tuples sorted by the second element in each tuple. dict(sorted_x) == x.
And for those wishing to sort on keys instead of values:
import operator
x = {1: 2, 3: 4, 4: 3, 2: 1, 0: 0}
sorted_x = sorted(x.items(), key=operator.itemgetter(0))
In Python3 since unpacking is not allowed we can use
x = {1: 2, 3: 4, 4: 3, 2: 1, 0: 0}
sorted_x = sorted(x.items(), key=lambda kv: kv[1])
If you want the output as a dict, you can use collections.OrderedDict:
import collections
sorted_dict = collections.OrderedDict(sorted_x)

As simple as: sorted(dict1, key=dict1.get)
Well, it is actually possible to do a "sort by dictionary values". Recently I had to do that in a Code Golf (Stack Overflow question Code golf: Word frequency chart). Abridged, the problem was of the kind: given a text, count how often each word is encountered and display a list of the top words, sorted by decreasing frequency.
If you construct a dictionary with the words as keys and the number of occurrences of each word as value, simplified here as:
from collections import defaultdict
d = defaultdict(int)
for w in text.split():
d[w] += 1
then you can get a list of the words, ordered by frequency of use with sorted(d, key=d.get) - the sort iterates over the dictionary keys, using the number of word occurrences as a sort key .
for w in sorted(d, key=d.get, reverse=True):
print(w, d[w])
I am writing this detailed explanation to illustrate what people often mean by "I can easily sort a dictionary by key, but how do I sort by value" - and I think the original post was trying to address such an issue. And the solution is to do sort of list of the keys, based on the values, as shown above.

You could use:
sorted(d.items(), key=lambda x: x[1])
This will sort the dictionary by the values of each entry within the dictionary from smallest to largest.
To sort it in descending order just add reverse=True:
sorted(d.items(), key=lambda x: x[1], reverse=True)
Input:
d = {'one':1,'three':3,'five':5,'two':2,'four':4}
a = sorted(d.items(), key=lambda x: x[1])
print(a)
Output:
[('one', 1), ('two', 2), ('three', 3), ('four', 4), ('five', 5)]

Dicts can't be sorted, but you can build a sorted list from them.
A sorted list of dict values:
sorted(d.values())
A list of (key, value) pairs, sorted by value:
from operator import itemgetter
sorted(d.items(), key=itemgetter(1))

In recent Python 2.7, we have the new OrderedDict type, which remembers the order in which the items were added.
>>> d = {"third": 3, "first": 1, "fourth": 4, "second": 2}
>>> for k, v in d.items():
... print "%s: %s" % (k, v)
...
second: 2
fourth: 4
third: 3
first: 1
>>> d
{'second': 2, 'fourth': 4, 'third': 3, 'first': 1}
To make a new ordered dictionary from the original, sorting by the values:
>>> from collections import OrderedDict
>>> d_sorted_by_value = OrderedDict(sorted(d.items(), key=lambda x: x[1]))
The OrderedDict behaves like a normal dict:
>>> for k, v in d_sorted_by_value.items():
... print "%s: %s" % (k, v)
...
first: 1
second: 2
third: 3
fourth: 4
>>> d_sorted_by_value
OrderedDict([('first': 1), ('second': 2), ('third': 3), ('fourth': 4)])

Using Python 3.5
Whilst I found the accepted answer useful, I was also surprised that it hasn't been updated to reference OrderedDict from the standard library collections module as a viable, modern alternative - designed to solve exactly this type of problem.
from operator import itemgetter
from collections import OrderedDict
x = {1: 2, 3: 4, 4: 3, 2: 1, 0: 0}
sorted_x = OrderedDict(sorted(x.items(), key=itemgetter(1)))
# OrderedDict([(0, 0), (2, 1), (1, 2), (4, 3), (3, 4)])
The official OrderedDict documentation offers a very similar example too, but using a lambda for the sort function:
# regular unsorted dictionary
d = {'banana': 3, 'apple':4, 'pear': 1, 'orange': 2}
# dictionary sorted by value
OrderedDict(sorted(d.items(), key=lambda t: t[1]))
# OrderedDict([('pear', 1), ('orange', 2), ('banana', 3), ('apple', 4)])

Pretty much the same as Hank Gay's answer:
sorted([(value,key) for (key,value) in mydict.items()])
Or optimized slightly as suggested by John Fouhy:
sorted((value,key) for (key,value) in mydict.items())

As of Python 3.6 the built-in dict will be ordered
Good news, so the OP's original use case of mapping pairs retrieved from a database with unique string ids as keys and numeric values as values into a built-in Python v3.6+ dict, should now respect the insert order.
If say the resulting two column table expressions from a database query like:
SELECT a_key, a_value FROM a_table ORDER BY a_value;
would be stored in two Python tuples, k_seq and v_seq (aligned by numerical index and with the same length of course), then:
k_seq = ('foo', 'bar', 'baz')
v_seq = (0, 1, 42)
ordered_map = dict(zip(k_seq, v_seq))
Allow to output later as:
for k, v in ordered_map.items():
print(k, v)
yielding in this case (for the new Python 3.6+ built-in dict!):
foo 0
bar 1
baz 42
in the same ordering per value of v.
Where in the Python 3.5 install on my machine it currently yields:
bar 1
foo 0
baz 42
Details:
As proposed in 2012 by Raymond Hettinger (cf. mail on python-dev with subject "More compact dictionaries with faster iteration") and now (in 2016) announced in a mail by Victor Stinner to python-dev with subject "Python 3.6 dict becomes compact and gets a private version; and keywords become ordered" due to the fix/implementation of issue 27350 "Compact and ordered dict" in Python 3.6 we will now be able, to use a built-in dict to maintain insert order!!
Hopefully this will lead to a thin layer OrderedDict implementation as a first step. As #JimFasarakis-Hilliard indicated, some see use cases for the OrderedDict type also in the future. I think the Python community at large will carefully inspect, if this will stand the test of time, and what the next steps will be.
Time to rethink our coding habits to not miss the possibilities opened by stable ordering of:
Keyword arguments and
(intermediate) dict storage
The first because it eases dispatch in the implementation of functions and methods in some cases.
The second as it encourages to more easily use dicts as intermediate storage in processing pipelines.
Raymond Hettinger kindly provided documentation explaining "The Tech Behind Python 3.6 Dictionaries" - from his San Francisco Python Meetup Group presentation 2016-DEC-08.
And maybe quite some Stack Overflow high decorated question and answer pages will receive variants of this information and many high quality answers will require a per version update too.
Caveat Emptor (but also see below update 2017-12-15):
As #ajcr rightfully notes: "The order-preserving aspect of this new implementation is considered an implementation detail and should not be relied upon." (from the whatsnew36) not nit picking, but the citation was cut a bit pessimistic ;-). It continues as " (this may change in the future, but it is desired to have this new dict implementation in the language for a few releases before changing the language spec to mandate order-preserving semantics for all current and future Python implementations; this also helps preserve backwards-compatibility with older versions of the language where random iteration order is still in effect, e.g. Python 3.5)."
So as in some human languages (e.g. German), usage shapes the language, and the will now has been declared ... in whatsnew36.
Update 2017-12-15:
In a mail to the python-dev list, Guido van Rossum declared:
Make it so. "Dict keeps insertion order" is the ruling. Thanks!
So, the version 3.6 CPython side-effect of dict insertion ordering is now becoming part of the language spec (and not anymore only an implementation detail). That mail thread also surfaced some distinguishing design goals for collections.OrderedDict as reminded by Raymond Hettinger during discussion.

It can often be very handy to use namedtuple. For example, you have a dictionary of 'name' as keys and 'score' as values and you want to sort on 'score':
import collections
Player = collections.namedtuple('Player', 'score name')
d = {'John':5, 'Alex':10, 'Richard': 7}
sorting with lowest score first:
worst = sorted(Player(v,k) for (k,v) in d.items())
sorting with highest score first:
best = sorted([Player(v,k) for (k,v) in d.items()], reverse=True)
Now you can get the name and score of, let's say the second-best player (index=1) very Pythonically like this:
player = best[1]
player.name
'Richard'
player.score
7

I had the same problem, and I solved it like this:
WantedOutput = sorted(MyDict, key=lambda x : MyDict[x])
(People who answer "It is not possible to sort a dict" did not read the question! In fact, "I can sort on the keys, but how can I sort based on the values?" clearly means that he wants a list of the keys sorted according to the value of their values.)
Please notice that the order is not well defined (keys with the same value will be in an arbitrary order in the output list).

If values are numeric you may also use Counter from collections.
from collections import Counter
x = {'hello': 1, 'python': 5, 'world': 3}
c = Counter(x)
print(c.most_common())
>> [('python', 5), ('world', 3), ('hello', 1)]

Starting from Python 3.6, dict objects are now ordered by insertion order. It's officially in the specifications of Python 3.7.
>>> words = {"python": 2, "blah": 4, "alice": 3}
>>> dict(sorted(words.items(), key=lambda x: x[1]))
{'python': 2, 'alice': 3, 'blah': 4}
Before that, you had to use OrderedDict.
Python 3.7 documentation says:
Changed in version 3.7: Dictionary order is guaranteed to be insertion
order. This behavior was implementation detail of CPython from 3.6.

In Python 2.7, simply do:
from collections import OrderedDict
# regular unsorted dictionary
d = {'banana': 3, 'apple':4, 'pear': 1, 'orange': 2}
# dictionary sorted by key
OrderedDict(sorted(d.items(), key=lambda t: t[0]))
OrderedDict([('apple', 4), ('banana', 3), ('orange', 2), ('pear', 1)])
# dictionary sorted by value
OrderedDict(sorted(d.items(), key=lambda t: t[1]))
OrderedDict([('pear', 1), ('orange', 2), ('banana', 3), ('apple', 4)])
copy-paste from : http://docs.python.org/dev/library/collections.html#ordereddict-examples-and-recipes
Enjoy ;-)

This is the code:
import operator
origin_list = [
{"name": "foo", "rank": 0, "rofl": 20000},
{"name": "Silly", "rank": 15, "rofl": 1000},
{"name": "Baa", "rank": 300, "rofl": 20},
{"name": "Zoo", "rank": 10, "rofl": 200},
{"name": "Penguin", "rank": -1, "rofl": 10000}
]
print ">> Original >>"
for foo in origin_list:
print foo
print "\n>> Rofl sort >>"
for foo in sorted(origin_list, key=operator.itemgetter("rofl")):
print foo
print "\n>> Rank sort >>"
for foo in sorted(origin_list, key=operator.itemgetter("rank")):
print foo
Here are the results:
Original
{'name': 'foo', 'rank': 0, 'rofl': 20000}
{'name': 'Silly', 'rank': 15, 'rofl': 1000}
{'name': 'Baa', 'rank': 300, 'rofl': 20}
{'name': 'Zoo', 'rank': 10, 'rofl': 200}
{'name': 'Penguin', 'rank': -1, 'rofl': 10000}
Rofl
{'name': 'Baa', 'rank': 300, 'rofl': 20}
{'name': 'Zoo', 'rank': 10, 'rofl': 200}
{'name': 'Silly', 'rank': 15, 'rofl': 1000}
{'name': 'Penguin', 'rank': -1, 'rofl': 10000}
{'name': 'foo', 'rank': 0, 'rofl': 20000}
Rank
{'name': 'Penguin', 'rank': -1, 'rofl': 10000}
{'name': 'foo', 'rank': 0, 'rofl': 20000}
{'name': 'Zoo', 'rank': 10, 'rofl': 200}
{'name': 'Silly', 'rank': 15, 'rofl': 1000}
{'name': 'Baa', 'rank': 300, 'rofl': 20}

Try the following approach. Let us define a dictionary called mydict with the following data:
mydict = {'carl':40,
'alan':2,
'bob':1,
'danny':3}
If one wanted to sort the dictionary by keys, one could do something like:
for key in sorted(mydict.iterkeys()):
print "%s: %s" % (key, mydict[key])
This should return the following output:
alan: 2
bob: 1
carl: 40
danny: 3
On the other hand, if one wanted to sort a dictionary by value (as is asked in the question), one could do the following:
for key, value in sorted(mydict.iteritems(), key=lambda (k,v): (v,k)):
print "%s: %s" % (key, value)
The result of this command (sorting the dictionary by value) should return the following:
bob: 1
alan: 2
danny: 3
carl: 40

You can create an "inverted index", also
from collections import defaultdict
inverse= defaultdict( list )
for k, v in originalDict.items():
inverse[v].append( k )
Now your inverse has the values; each value has a list of applicable keys.
for k in sorted(inverse):
print k, inverse[k]

You can use the collections.Counter. Note, this will work for both numeric and non-numeric values.
>>> x = {1: 2, 3: 4, 4:3, 2:1, 0:0}
>>> from collections import Counter
>>> #To sort in reverse order
>>> Counter(x).most_common()
[(3, 4), (4, 3), (1, 2), (2, 1), (0, 0)]
>>> #To sort in ascending order
>>> Counter(x).most_common()[::-1]
[(0, 0), (2, 1), (1, 2), (4, 3), (3, 4)]
>>> #To get a dictionary sorted by values
>>> from collections import OrderedDict
>>> OrderedDict(Counter(x).most_common()[::-1])
OrderedDict([(0, 0), (2, 1), (1, 2), (4, 3), (3, 4)])

The collections solution mentioned in another answer is absolutely superb, because you retain a connection between the key and value which in the case of dictionaries is extremely important.
I don't agree with the number one choice presented in another answer, because it throws away the keys.
I used the solution mentioned above (code shown below) and retained access to both keys and values and in my case the ordering was on the values, but the importance was the ordering of the keys after ordering the values.
from collections import Counter
x = {'hello':1, 'python':5, 'world':3}
c=Counter(x)
print( c.most_common() )
>> [('python', 5), ('world', 3), ('hello', 1)]

You can also use a custom function that can be passed to parameter key.
def dict_val(x):
return x[1]
x = {1: 2, 3: 4, 4: 3, 2: 1, 0: 0}
sorted_x = sorted(x.items(), key=dict_val)

You can use a skip dict which is a dictionary that's permanently sorted by value.
>>> data = {1: 2, 3: 4, 4: 3, 2: 1, 0: 0}
>>> SkipDict(data)
{0: 0.0, 2: 1.0, 1: 2.0, 4: 3.0, 3: 4.0}
If you use keys(), values() or items() then you'll iterate in sorted order by value.
It's implemented using the skip list datastructure.

Of course, remember, you need to use OrderedDict because regular Python dictionaries don't keep the original order.
from collections import OrderedDict
a = OrderedDict(sorted(originalDict.items(), key=lambda x: x[1]))
If you do not have Python 2.7 or higher, the best you can do is iterate over the values in a generator function. (There is an OrderedDict for 2.4 and 2.6 here, but
a) I don't know about how well it works
and
b) You have to download and install it of course. If you do not have administrative access, then I'm afraid the option's out.)
def gen(originalDict):
for x, y in sorted(zip(originalDict.keys(), originalDict.values()), key=lambda z: z[1]):
yield (x, y)
#Yields as a tuple with (key, value). You can iterate with conditional clauses to get what you want.
for bleh, meh in gen(myDict):
if bleh == "foo":
print(myDict[bleh])
You can also print out every value
for bleh, meh in gen(myDict):
print(bleh, meh)
Please remember to remove the parentheses after print if not using Python 3.0 or above

from django.utils.datastructures import SortedDict
def sortedDictByKey(self,data):
"""Sorted dictionary order by key"""
sortedDict = SortedDict()
if data:
if isinstance(data, dict):
sortedKey = sorted(data.keys())
for k in sortedKey:
sortedDict[k] = data[k]
return sortedDict

Here is a solution using zip on d.values() and d.keys(). A few lines down this link (on Dictionary view objects) is:
This allows the creation of (value, key) pairs using zip(): pairs = zip(d.values(), d.keys()).
So we can do the following:
d = {'key1': 874.7, 'key2': 5, 'key3': 8.1}
d_sorted = sorted(zip(d.values(), d.keys()))
print d_sorted
# prints: [(5, 'key2'), (8.1, 'key3'), (874.7, 'key1')]

As pointed out by Dilettant, Python 3.6 will now keep the order! I thought I'd share a function I wrote that eases the sorting of an iterable (tuple, list, dict). In the latter case, you can sort either on keys or values, and it can take numeric comparison into account. Only for >= 3.6!
When you try using sorted on an iterable that holds e.g. strings as well as ints, sorted() will fail. Of course you can force string comparison with str(). However, in some cases you want to do actual numeric comparison where 12 is smaller than 20 (which is not the case in string comparison). So I came up with the following. When you want explicit numeric comparison you can use the flag num_as_num which will try to do explicit numeric sorting by trying to convert all values to floats. If that succeeds, it will do numeric sorting, otherwise it'll resort to string comparison.
Comments for improvement welcome.
def sort_iterable(iterable, sort_on=None, reverse=False, num_as_num=False):
def _sort(i):
# sort by 0 = keys, 1 values, None for lists and tuples
try:
if num_as_num:
if i is None:
_sorted = sorted(iterable, key=lambda v: float(v), reverse=reverse)
else:
_sorted = dict(sorted(iterable.items(), key=lambda v: float(v[i]), reverse=reverse))
else:
raise TypeError
except (TypeError, ValueError):
if i is None:
_sorted = sorted(iterable, key=lambda v: str(v), reverse=reverse)
else:
_sorted = dict(sorted(iterable.items(), key=lambda v: str(v[i]), reverse=reverse))
return _sorted
if isinstance(iterable, list):
sorted_list = _sort(None)
return sorted_list
elif isinstance(iterable, tuple):
sorted_list = tuple(_sort(None))
return sorted_list
elif isinstance(iterable, dict):
if sort_on == 'keys':
sorted_dict = _sort(0)
return sorted_dict
elif sort_on == 'values':
sorted_dict = _sort(1)
return sorted_dict
elif sort_on is not None:
raise ValueError(f"Unexpected value {sort_on} for sort_on. When sorting a dict, use key or values")
else:
raise TypeError(f"Unexpected type {type(iterable)} for iterable. Expected a list, tuple, or dict")

I just learned a relevant skill from Python for Everybody.
You may use a temporary list to help you to sort the dictionary:
# Assume dictionary to be:
d = {'apple': 500.1, 'banana': 1500.2, 'orange': 1.0, 'pineapple': 789.0}
# Create a temporary list
tmp = []
# Iterate through the dictionary and append each tuple into the temporary list
for key, value in d.items():
tmptuple = (value, key)
tmp.append(tmptuple)
# Sort the list in ascending order
tmp = sorted(tmp)
print (tmp)
If you want to sort the list in descending order, simply change the original sorting line to:
tmp = sorted(tmp, reverse=True)
Using list comprehension, the one-liner would be:
# Assuming the dictionary looks like
d = {'apple': 500.1, 'banana': 1500.2, 'orange': 1.0, 'pineapple': 789.0}
# One-liner for sorting in ascending order
print (sorted([(v, k) for k, v in d.items()]))
# One-liner for sorting in descending order
print (sorted([(v, k) for k, v in d.items()], reverse=True))
Sample Output:
# Ascending order
[(1.0, 'orange'), (500.1, 'apple'), (789.0, 'pineapple'), (1500.2, 'banana')]
# Descending order
[(1500.2, 'banana'), (789.0, 'pineapple'), (500.1, 'apple'), (1.0, 'orange')]

Use ValueSortedDict from dicts:
from dicts.sorteddict import ValueSortedDict
d = {1: 2, 3: 4, 4:3, 2:1, 0:0}
sorted_dict = ValueSortedDict(d)
print sorted_dict.items()
[(0, 0), (2, 1), (1, 2), (4, 3), (3, 4)]

Iterate through a dict and sort it by its values in descending order:
$ python --version
Python 3.2.2
$ cat sort_dict_by_val_desc.py
dictionary = dict(siis = 1, sana = 2, joka = 3, tuli = 4, aina = 5)
for word in sorted(dictionary, key=dictionary.get, reverse=True):
print(word, dictionary[word])
$ python sort_dict_by_val_desc.py
aina 5
tuli 4
joka 3
sana 2
siis 1

If your values are integers, and you use Python 2.7 or newer, you can use collections.Counter instead of dict. The most_common method will give you all items, sorted by the value.

This works in 3.1.x:
import operator
slovar_sorted=sorted(slovar.items(), key=operator.itemgetter(1), reverse=True)
print(slovar_sorted)

For the sake of completeness, I am posting a solution using heapq. Note, this method will work for both numeric and non-numeric values
>>> x = {1: 2, 3: 4, 4:3, 2:1, 0:0}
>>> x_items = x.items()
>>> heapq.heapify(x_items)
>>> #To sort in reverse order
>>> heapq.nlargest(len(x_items),x_items, operator.itemgetter(1))
[(3, 4), (4, 3), (1, 2), (2, 1), (0, 0)]
>>> #To sort in ascending order
>>> heapq.nsmallest(len(x_items),x_items, operator.itemgetter(1))
[(0, 0), (2, 1), (1, 2), (4, 3), (3, 4)]