How to keep a dict sorted as new items are pushed in?

Question

So I have a high score file like this:

Markus:5000
Mike:3000
John:2400

And I read it to an OrderdDict:

high_scores = OrderedDict()
with open('highscores.txt') as file:
    for line in file:
        name, score = line.strip().split(':')
        high_scores[name] = int(score)

Now as I add new scores to the dictionary, how can I keep it sorted? The only way I thought of is to recreate the dictionary every time with something like this:

high_scores = sorted(high_scores.items(), key=lambda x: x[1], reversed=True)
high_scores = OrderedDict(high_scores)

But this seems rather awful behaviour, I would much prefer if the elements were put into the correct position as I add them to the dictionary, i.e. I'd like to keep the dictionary sorted at all times.

Answer 1

OrderedDict is not the best structure for a highscores list. Try a regular list of 2-tuples, and simply sort() it every time you add an element.

If you really dislike the explicit sorting, you could use https://pypi.python.org/pypi/sortedcontainers to do it for you.