Sort a dictionary by value in JavaScript

Question

Here is my dictionary:

const dict = {   "x" : 1,   "y" : 6,   "z" : 9,   "a" : 5,   "b" : 7,   "c" : 11,   "d" : 17,   "t" : 3 }; 

I need a way to sort my dict dictionary from the least to the greatest or from the greatest to the least. Or even it would be fine I had an array with the sorted keys in it. But I do not know how to do such thing using javascript. I have done it before using python, like this:

import heapq from operator import itemgetter  thirty_largest = heapq.nlargest(8, dict.iteritems(), key=itemgetter(1)) 

I have searched for it in Google and I found that arrays have sort() function but not dictionaries. So my question is: How can I sort the dictionary or get top 5 biggest values in sort order?

Answer 1

It may not be straight forward in JavaScript.

var dict = {    "x": 1,    "y": 6,    "z": 9,    "a": 5,    "b": 7,    "c": 11,    "d": 17,    "t": 3  };    // Create items array  var items = Object.keys(dict).map(function(key) {    return [key, dict[key]];  });    // Sort the array based on the second element  items.sort(function(first, second) {    return second[1] - first[1];  });    // Create a new array with only the first 5 items  console.log(items.slice(0, 5));

The first step, creating items array, is similar to Python's

items = map(lambda x: [x, var[x]], var.keys()) 

which can be conveniently written as

items = list(dict.items()) 

and the sorting step is similar to Python's sorting with cmp parameter

items.sort(cmp=lambda x, y: y[1] - x[1]) 

and the last step is similar to the Python's slicing operation.

print items[:5] // [['d', 17], ['c', 11], ['z', 9], ['b', 7], ['y', 6]] 

Answer 2

The answer provided by @thefourtheye works to an extent, but it does not return the same "dictionary" structure.

If you want to return a sorted object with the same structure you started with, you can run this on the items returned from the accepted answer:

sorted_obj={} $.each(items, function(k, v) {     use_key = v[0]     use_value = v[1]     sorted_obj[use_key] = use_value }) 

Combine them for a single function that sorts a JavaScript object:

function sort_object(obj) {     items = Object.keys(obj).map(function(key) {         return [key, obj[key]];     });     items.sort(function(first, second) {         return second[1] - first[1];     });     sorted_obj={}     $.each(items, function(k, v) {         use_key = v[0]         use_value = v[1]         sorted_obj[use_key] = use_value     })     return(sorted_obj) }  

Example:

Simply pass your object into the sort_object function:

dict = {   "x" : 1,   "y" : 6,   "z" : 9,   "a" : 5,   "b" : 7,   "c" : 11,   "d" : 17,   "t" : 3 };  sort_object(dict) 

Result:

{ "d":17, "c":11, "z":9, "b":7, "y":6, "a":5, "t":3, "x":1 } 

"Proof":

res = sort_object(dict)  $.each(res, function(elem, index) {     alert(elem) })