Sorting CSV file alphabetically using Python

Question

Can someone please tell me how to sort a CSV file alphabetically in columns when the data comes from multiple variables (e.g name and age)? I need names to be displayed in alphabetical order.

Here is my code:

with open ("Information.csv", "a", newline="",) as CSVFile:
    for_use = csv.writer (CSVFile, delimiter=",")
    info = [[name, age]]
    for_use.writerows(info)

You will have to 1) read the entire CSV into memory, 2) sort it, 3) output it back into a CSV file. You can't really "sort a file" on disk. — deceze
– deceze ♦, Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 12:24

Cyrbil · Accepted Answer · 2015-11-16 12:58:22Z

1

You can read as a dict then sort like you sort a dict ...

import csv
with open('Information.csv') as csvfile:
    reader = csv.DictReader(csvfile)

    sorted = sorted(reader,
                key=lambda k: (k['name'].lower(), k['age'])) # sorting by name and age

sorted will be a generator that yields all items sorted

edited Nov 16, 2015 at 12:58

answered Nov 16, 2015 at 12:28

Cyrbil

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4 Comments

HannaG Over a year ago

Gave me an error AttributeError: 'DictReader' object has no attribute 'items'

Cyrbil Over a year ago

Oups, remove .items()

HannaG Over a year ago

ValueError: I/O operation on closed file. Does not work!

Cyrbil Over a year ago

Oups again, moved the operation inside the with statement

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