Maybe approximate doing order_by("thing", "-otherthing", "thing2") in Django, but for python things. Originally piqued my interest because of bmispelon on #django IRC

sorto.py

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
from __future__ import unicode_literals, absolute_import
from pprint import pprint
from operator import itemgetter
from copy import deepcopy
import sys

"""
Wheeee:
python sorto.py "age" "gender"
python sorto.py "-age" "name"
python sorto.py "-age" "-name"
python sorto.py "name" "-age"
"""

users = [
    {
        "is_active": True,
        "age": 35,
        "eye_color": "brown",
        "name": "Bernard",
        "gender": "male",
        "email": "[email protected]",
    },
    {
        "is_active": True,
        "age": 34,
        "eye_color": "brown",
        "name": "Manny",
        "gender": "male",
        "email": "[email protected]",
    },
    {
        "is_active": True,
        "age": 35,
        "eye_color": "brown",
        "name": "Fran",
        "gender": "female",
        "email": "[email protected]",
    },
    # And so on ...
]

def prepare_sort(inputs):
    return tuple({'key': itemgetter(x.lstrip('-')),
                  'reverse': x.startswith('-')}
                 for x in reversed(inputs))


by = sys.argv[1:]
keys = prepare_sort(by)
pprint(by)
def dosort(data, sorting):
    newdata = deepcopy(data)
    for sorter in sorting:
        newdata.sort(**sorter)
    return newdata
pprint(dosort(users, keys))