[FIXED] python sort groupby data by key/function

Issue

I would like to sort the data by the month however not alphabetically rather by the month order, i.e first the sales for January and then February etc, see the illustrated data I created

month=['January','February','March','April','January','February','March','April']
sales=[10,100,130,145,13409,670,560,40]
dict = {'month': month, 'sales': sales}  
df = pd.DataFrame(dict)
df.groupby('month')['sales'].mean().sort_values()

in this case I received data by the sales average, however I would like to sort the value by the month order

Solution

Alternatively and probably slower, but just for posterity you can use lambda with map:

month_order = {"January": 1, "February": 2, "March": 3, "April": 4}

df = df.sort_values(by="month", key=lambda x: x.map(month_order), ignore_index=True)

Answered By - Jason Baker