Python 3 sort a dict by its values [duplicate]

itemgetter (see other answers) is (as I know) more efficient for large dictionaries but for the common case, I believe that d.get wins. And it does not require an extra import.

>>> d = {"aa": 3, "bb": 4, "cc": 2, "dd": 1}
>>> for k in sorted(d, key=d.get, reverse=True):
...     k, d[k]
...
('bb', 4)
('aa', 3)
('cc', 2)
('dd', 1)

Note that alternatively you can set d.__getitem__ as key function which may provide a small performance boost over d.get.