Is it possible to write a base class method to sort a list of class objects, stored as a static class variable, in a child class, by a key in a dictionary, that is an attribute of the class using sort or sorted or does a more elaborate sorting method need to be written?
I’m a python noob and I’ve attempted to write the “my_sorter” method using sort & sorted, trying at a lambda key definition, itemgetter, and attrgetter and am not sure if I am failing at the syntax to access these mixed nested structures or if it’s just not possible without writing a more elaborate sorting routine to deliberately shift entries around in the list.
Note that each child class has a static variable named “mindex” that identifies the “primary key” of its attribute dictionary (i.e. a unique value to sort by). What would the my_sorter() method look like?
class Engine():
storage = []
@classmethod
def my_sorter(cls):
#sort cls.storage by cls.mindex
class Person(Engine):
mindex = 'Name'
def __init__(self, name):
self.attributes = {
'Name' : name,
}
class Meeting (Engine):
mindex = 'Date'
def __init__(self, date):
self.attributes = {
'Date' : date,
}
You don't show anywhere how your objects are ending up in the storage list, but assuming you have that working correctly (and you're not getting a mix of objects of different subclasses all in Engine.storage unexpectedly), the sorting should be pretty simple.
@classmethod
def my_sorter(cls):
return sorted(cls.storage, key=lambda obj: obj.attributes[cls.mindex])
I'm a little skeptical though about whether your Person and Meeting classes should be subclasses of Engine. That doesn't seem like an IS-A relationship to me. Perhaps it would make more sense if I knew the whole project design.