Python sorting list of dictionaries by multiple keys

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Published on 2009-07-17T14:36:48Z Indexed on 2010/04/28 23:17 UTC
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I have a list of dicts:

b = [{u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Utley, Alex', u'Total_Points': 96.0},
 {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Russo, Brandon', u'Total_Points': 96.0},
 {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Chappell, Justin', u'Total_Points': 96.0},
 {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Foster, Toney', u'Total_Points': 80.0},
 {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Lawson, Roman', u'Total_Points': 80.0},
 {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Lempke, Sam', u'Total_Points': 80.0},
 {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Gnezda, Alex', u'Total_Points': 78.0},
 {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Kirks, Damien', u'Total_Points': 78.0},
 {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Worden, Tom', u'Total_Points': 78.0},
 {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Korecz, Mike', u'Total_Points': 78.0},
 {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Swartz, Brian', u'Total_Points': 66.0},
 {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Burgess, Randy', u'Total_Points': 66.0},
 {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Smugala, Ryan', u'Total_Points': 66.0},
 {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Harmon, Gary', u'Total_Points': 66.0},
 {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Blasinsky, Scott', u'Total_Points': 60.0},
 {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Carter III, Laymon', u'Total_Points': 60.0},
 {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Coleman, Johnathan', u'Total_Points': 60.0},
 {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Venditti, Nick', u'Total_Points': 60.0},
 {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Blackwell, Devon', u'Total_Points': 60.0},
 {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Kovach, Alex', u'Total_Points': 60.0},
 {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Bolden, Antonio', u'Total_Points': 60.0},
 {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Smith, Ryan', u'Total_Points': 60.0}]

and I need to use a multi key sort reversed by Total_Points, then not reversed by TOT_PTS_Misc.

This can be done at the command prompt like so:

a = sorted(b, key=lambda d: (-d['Total_Points'], d['TOT_PTS_Misc']))

But I have to run this through a function, where I pass in the list and the sort keys. For example, def multikeysort(dict_list, sortkeys):.

How can the lambda line be used which will sort the list, for an arbitrary number of keys that are passed in to the multikeysort function, and take into consideration that the sortkeys may have any number of keys and those that need reversed sorts will be identified with a '-' before it?

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