Python Pandas Sorting Dataframe In Ascending or Descending Order Based On Single or Multiple Columns (Example)

Sorting pandas dataframe by single or multiple columns.
DataFrame has "sort_values()" method which can be used to sort the dataframe based single or multiple columns , control sorting flow and choose ascending or descending order.

Creating a new dataframe with dictionary 

# importing pandas
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np

# animal_data dictionary
animal_data = {
    "Name": ["Cat", "Dog", "Cow"],
    "Speed": [15, 12, 10],
    "Sound": ["Meow", "Woof", "Mooo"],
    "Rank": [1, 5, 3],
    "Jumping_height": [20, 10, np.NaN],
}

# creating a dataframe using the animal_data dictionary
animal_df = pd.DataFrame(animal_data)

# printing animal_df
print("animal_df \n", animal_df)

animal_df Name Speed Sound Rank Jumping_height 0 Cat 15 Meow 1 20.0 1 Dog 12 Woof 5 10.0 2 Cow 10 Mooo 3 NaN

Sorted in ascending order

asc_sorted_animal_df = animal_df.sort_values(
    by=["Speed"],
    ascending=True,
)

print("sorted by speed in ascending order \n", asc_sorted_animal_df)

sorted by speed in ascending order Name Speed Sound Rank Jumping_height 2 Cow 10 Mooo 3 NaN 1 Dog 12 Woof 5 10.0 0 Cat 15 Meow 1 20.0

Sorted in descending order

desc_sorted_animal_df = animal_df.sort_values(
    by=["Speed"],
    ascending=False,
)
print("sorted by speed in descending order \n", desc_sorted_animal_df)

sorted by speed in descending order Name Speed Sound Rank Jumping_height 0 Cat 15 Meow 1 20.0 1 Dog 12 Woof 5 10.0 2 Cow 10 Mooo 3 NaN

Sorted by "Speed" column values in descending order and then sorted by "Rank" column values in ascending order

sorted_by_multi_col = animal_df.sort_values(
    by=["Rank", "Speed"],
    ascending=[True, False],
)

# the df shows it has been sorted in ascending order based on Rank as the last operation
# [Speed 0 , Rank 1 ]
print(
    "sorted by speed in descending order \n and then sorted by rank in ascending order \n",
    sorted_by_multi_col,)

sorted by speed in descending order and then sorted by rank in ascending order Name Speed Sound Rank Jumping_height 0 Cat 15 Meow 1 20.0 2 Cow 10 Mooo 3 NaN 1 Dog 12 Woof 5 10.0