Pandas DataFrame sort_values() Method

Example

Sort the DataFrame by age:

import pandas as pd

data = {
"age": [50, 40, 30, 40, 20, 10, 30],
"qualified": [True, False, False, False, False, True, True]
}
df = pd.DataFrame(data)

newdf = df.sort_values(by='age')

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Definition and Usage

The sort_values() method sorts the DataFrame by the specified label.

Syntax

dataframe.sort_values(by, axis, ascending, inplace, kind, na_position, ignore_index, key)

Parameters

The parameters are keyword arguments.

Parameter	Value	Description
by	String List of strings	Required. Specify labels to sort by. Either index level(s) or column label(s). Or, if the axis is 1 or 'columns' this values specify column level(s) or index label(s)
axis	`0 1 'index' 'columns'`	Optional. Default 0. Specifies the axis to sort by
ascending	`True False`	Optional, default True. Specifies whether to sort ascending (0 -> 9) or descending (9 -> 0)
inplace	`True False`	Optional, default False. Specifies whether to perform the operation on the original DataFrame or not, if not, which is default, this method returns a new DataFrame
kind	`'quicksort' 'mergesort' 'heapsort'`	Optional, default 'quicksort'. Specifies the sorting algorithm
na_position	`'first' 'last'`	Optional, default 'last'. Specifies how to handle NULL values. 'first' means put them first, 'last' means put them last.
ignore_index	`True False`	Optional, default False. Specifies whether to ignore index or not. If True the original indexes are ignored, and replaced by 0, 1, 2 etc.
key	Function	Optional, specify a function to be executed before the sorting