Create a list of namedtuples
It can often be very handy to use namedtuple. For example, you have a dictionary of 'name' as keys and 'score' as values like:
d = {'John':5, 'Alex':10, 'Richard': 7}
You can list the items as tuples, sorted if you like, and get the name and score of, let's say the player with the highest score (index=0) very Pythonically like this:
>>> player = best[0]
>>> player.name
'Alex'
>>> player.score
10
How to do this:
list in random order or keeping order of collections.OrderedDict:
import collections
Player = collections.namedtuple('Player', 'name score')
players = list(Player(*item) for item in d.items())
in order, sorted by value ('score'):
import collections
Player = collections.namedtuple('Player', 'score name')
sorted with lowest score first:
worst = sorted(Player(v,k) for (k,v) in d.items())
sorted with highest score first:
best = sorted([Player(v,k) for (k,v) in d.items()], reverse=True)