For Loop in python keeps changing the index

Question

I have this loop to create the nav bar. It's working except the arrangement of the links keeps changing every time i run the program

nav ={'page1':'page1.html','page2': 'page2.html','page3':'page3.html','page4':'page4.html','page5':'page5.html'}
output= ""
for key in nav:
    if nav[key]==active:
        output+='<li class="active"><a href="%s">%s</a></li>' % (nav[key],key)
    else:
        linksHtml+='<li><a href="%s">%s</a></li>' % (nav[key],key)
return output

You could just extract the keys and order them before iterating: keys = sorted(list(nav.keys())) — fafl
– fafl, Commented Jun 18, 2017 at 19:54

talkingtoaj · Accepted Answer · 2017-06-18 20:18:59Z

1

Using the collections package OrderedDict method you can ensure they always come out in the same order you originally added them. See https://docs.python.org/2/library/collections.html#collections.OrderedDict for more detaills.

import collections

nav ={'page1':'page1.html','page2': 'page2.html','page3':'page3.html','page4':'page4.html','page5':'page5.html'}
output= ""
for key in collections.OrderedDict(nav):
    if nav[key]==active:
        output+='<li class="active"><a href="%s">%s</a></li>' % (nav[key],key)
    else:
        linksHtml+='<li><a href="%s">%s</a></li>' % (nav[key],key)
return output

answered Jun 18, 2017 at 20:18

talkingtoaj

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Comments

liorko · Accepted Answer · 2017-06-18 19:40:44Z

1

You can use OrderDict if you want to keep the order of insertion.

answered Jun 18, 2017 at 19:40

liorko

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