Sorting Python dictionary based on nested dictionary values

Question

How do you sort a Python dictionary based on the inner value of a nested dictionary?

For example, sort mydict below based on the value of context :

mydict = {
    'age': {'context': 2},
    'address': {'context': 4},
    'name': {'context': 1}
}

The result should be like this:

{
    'name': {'context': 1}, 
    'age': {'context': 2},
    'address': {'context': 4}       
}

Answer 1

>>> from collections import OrderedDict
>>> mydict = {
        'age': {'context': 2},
        'address': {'context': 4},
        'name': {'context': 1}
}
>>> OrderedDict(sorted(mydict.iteritems(), key=lambda x: x[1]['context']))
OrderedDict([('name', {'context': 1}), ('age', {'context': 2}), ('address', {'context': 4})])

Answer 2

You can not sort a dictionary no matter how hard you try, because they are an unordered collection. Use OrderedDict form collections module instead.