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Python

Regex Extra Credit - How do I sort address_book?

Can't work out how to reference the object instances sitting inside the address_book instance and the associated attributes that are held there. Feels as though it's possible I just can't work out how to access them?

import re

with open('C:/Users/Joshua Emanuel/PycharmProjects/Treehouse/Better Python/names', encoding='utf-8') as open_file:
    data = open_file.read()

line = re.compile(r'''
    ^(?P<name>(?P<last>[-\w ]*),\s(?P<first>[-\w ]+))\t
    (?P<email>[-\w\d.+]+ @[-\w\d.]+)\t
    (?P<phone>\(?\d{3}\)?-?\s?\d{3}-\d{4})?\t
    (?P<job>[\w\s]+,\s[\w\s.]+)\t?
    (?P<twitter>@[\w\d]+)?$
''', re.X | re.M)


class Person():
    def __init__(self, **kwargs):
        for key, value in kwargs.items():
            setattr(self, key, value)

    def __repr__(self):
        return repr(self.first + " " + self.last)

    def __sort__(self):
        return self.last

    @classmethod
    def construct(cls, list, line, data):
        for match in line.finditer(data):
            list.append(cls(**match.groupdict()))


class AddressBook(list):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__()

    def show_book(self):
        for person in self:
            print(f'{person.first} {person.last}')

    def __sort__(self):
        list.sort(self)


address_book = AddressBook()
Person.construct(address_book, line, data)

1 Answer

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,269 Points

The "sort" method takes an optional "key" function which can be used to retrieve an attribute to sort on:

        self.sort(key=lambda person: person.last)   # sort by last name