Hi,

I am currently getting JSON data from the discogs API (mp3 tag data) and wish to sort the results by the key's value. In this case I am trying to get data for a Guns n Roses song and the output has 1988 as the first one while the data actually has a record from 1987. How can I sort this data so that I can get to the sorted data by year (olderst to newest). The code below sorts by either key or value but thats not what I intended to get. Please help.

import json
import urllib2
request = urllib2.Request('http://api.discogs.com/database/search?sort=year&sort_order=asc&artist=%22Guns+N%27+Roses%22&track=%22Sweet+Child+O%27+Mine%22&format_exact=Album&type=master')
request.add_header('User-Agent','Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT)')
request.add_header('Content-Type','application/json')
response = urllib2.urlopen(request)
json_raw= response.readlines()
json_object = json.loads(json_raw[0])



for row in json_object['results']:
    try:
        from operator import itemgetter
        for k, v in sorted(row.items(), key=itemgetter(0)):
            print k, v
    except KeyError: 
        pass

Why you do readlines as you only use first one?

This could help:

'''sort_dictionary_list1.py
sort a list of dictionaries by a value with a helper function
'''

import pprint

def sort_by_age(d):
    '''a helper function for sorting'''
    return d['age']

d_list = [
{
'name' : 'frank',
'age' : 24,
},
{
'name' : 'joe',
'age' : 21,
},
{
'name' : 'tim',
'age' : 18,
}]

pprint.pprint(d_list)
print('-'*30)
pprint.pprint(sorted(d_list, key=sort_by_age))

'''result -->
[{'age': 24, 'name': 'frank'},
 {'age': 21, 'name': 'joe'},
 {'age': 18, 'name': 'tim'}]
------------------------------
[{'age': 18, 'name': 'tim'},
 {'age': 21, 'name': 'joe'},
 {'age': 24, 'name': 'frank'}]
'''

Applied to your code:

'''json_read_url1.py
read json type data from a url and process it
tested with Python27
'''

import json
import urllib2

def sort_by_year(d):
    '''
    helper function for sorting a list of dictionaries'''
    return d.get('year', None)


# this is a long url so do it in parts
url1 = "http://api.discogs.com/database/search?sort=year&sort_order="
url2 = "asc&artist=%22Guns+N%27+Roses%22&track="
url3 = "%22Sweet+Child+O%27+Mine%22&format_exact=Album&type=master"
url = url1 + url2 + url3

request = urllib2.Request(url)

request.add_header('User-Agent','Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT)')
request.add_header('Content-Type','application/json')

response = urllib2.urlopen(request)
json_raw = response.readlines()
json_object = json.loads(json_raw[0])

print(type(json_object['results']))  # test
print('-'*50)

for row in sorted(json_object['results'], key=sort_by_year):
    #print(row)
    try:
        print("%s = %s" % (row['title'], row['year']))  # test
    except:
        pass

'''my result -->
<type 'list'>
--------------------------------------------------
Guns N' Roses - Appetite For Destruction = 1987
Guns N' Roses - Sweet Child O' Mine = 1988
Guns N' Roses - November Rain = 1991
Guns N' Roses - Silent Shots = 1991
Guns N' Roses - Live Vol. 1 = 1993
Guns N' Roses - November Rain (Vol. 2) = 1993
Guns N' Roses - Banzai = 1993
Guns N' Roses - Welcome To The Videos = 1998
Guns N' Roses - Live Era '87-'93 = 1999
Guns N' Roses - Greatest Hits = 2004
'''
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