How to Sort Django QuerySet in Ascending and Descending Order?

Aniruddha Chaudhari
Updated: Apr 07, 2021

In previous tutorial, we have learnt how to create model and form in Django. This tutorial is about reading model data and sorting it.

Let’s say you have this contact model in your Django App.

class ContactModel(models.Model):
   name = models.CharField(max_length=120)
   mobile = models.IntegerField()
   email = models.EmailField()

When we read the data from the model, Django returns queryset. Django has order_by method to sort the queryset in ascending and descending order. You can order the queryset on any field.

In the Django model, there is one autogenerated ‘id’ field. You can use any of the fields (id name, mobile or name) to sort the queryset.

Sort by Ascending Order

Let’s sort the queryset on ‘id’ in ascending order.

ContactModel.objects.all().order_by('id')

Sort by Descending Order (desc)

Use the not sign ‘-‘ to sort the queryset in reverse order aka descending order (desc).

ContactModel.objects.all().order_by('-id')

Note: Here we are reading all the entries from the model. You can also use filter() method instead of all() method to filter out some entries.

Django Order by Multiple Fields

You can also use the multiple fields to sort the queryset by passing multiple fields as parameters to order_by methods.

ContactModel.objects.all().order_by('name', 'mobile')

How does it work?

First, it sorts the queryset by name (first field). If the person has the same name, it sorts queryset by mobile number (second field). If all the entries in the queryset have a unique name, the second field ‘mobile’ does not make any difference.

This order_by method works with any type of model fields like text string, date, time, number, etc.

Usually, models are read and ordered in the Django view function before passing it to the HTML template.

Hope you find this quick tutorial on how sort Django queryset in ascending and descending order helpful. Any doubt? Let me know in the comment.

Aniruddha Chaudhari

I am a Python enthusiast who loves Linux and Vim. I hold a Master of Computer Science degree from NIT Trichy and have 10 years of experience in the IT industry, focusing on the Software Development Lifecycle from Requirements Gathering, Design, Development to Deployment. I have worked at IBM, Ericsson, and NetApp, and I share my knowledge on CSEstack.org.