An example of sorting dicts of dicts for my blog

sort_dicts_of_dicts.py

from operator import itemgetter

files = {
    'first' : {'filename': 'first.xml', 'priority': 0},
    'second': {'filename': 'second.xml', 'priority': 4},
    'third' : {'filename': 'third.xml', 'priority': 0},
    'fourth': {'filename': 'fourth.xml', 'priority': 3},
    'fifth' : {'filename': 'fifth.xml', 'priority': 6},
}

# Order isn't maintained in a dict
for name, item in files.iteritems():
    print name, item
    
# If you don't need the key/value pairs to be maintained, itemgetter works just fine
for item in sorted(files.values(), key=itemgetter('priority')):
    print item
    
# If you need those key/value pairs, you can use a lambda instead
for name, item in sorted(files.items(), key=lambda i: i[1]['priority']):
    print name, item