PHP-sort arrays by key

Question

very OT, I hope I'm not abusing this forum... If someone can
help, great!
Say I have a large array, called $orders, looking like this:
Array
[retail_2833200] => Array
[0] => bobby
[1] => 29 Jan 2007 - 10:54
[2] => 212-879-6786
[retail_2833231] => Array
[0] => john
[1] => 29 Jan 2007 - 11:04
[2] => 718-768-7685
etc......
Now I want to be able to sort the array, by any key (i.e. by
name, date, or phone number).
I have done that before, but I'm sure my method is not the
best method to do that.
Here's how I do it:
foreach($orders as $order){ // I append the name value to the
array keys (and insert a separator #)
$sort_by_name[] = $order[0].'#'.$order;
natcasesort($sort_by_name); // I sort the resulting new array
(hence sorting them by name)
foreach($sort_by_name as $sort){ // I remove the appended
names, to get back to original values
$final_array[] = preg_replace('/.*?#/','',$sort);
now I have a new array called $final_array, sorted by names.
I'm sure there is a better way to do this!!!!
seb ( [email protected])
http://webtrans1.com | high-end web
design
Downloads: Slide Show, Directory Browser, Mailing List

Answer 1

Michael Fesser wrote:
> .oO((_seb_))
>
>> Say I have a large array, called $orders, looking
like this:
>> [...]
>>
>> Now I want to be able to sort the array, by any key
(i.e. by name, date, or phone number).
>
> Use your own comparison function, given as a callback to
uasort().
>
>
http://www.php.net/uasort
>
> To be flexible you could use a global variable (or a
class member if
> you'd do it in OOP), so the comparison function knows
which key you want
> to use for sorting, e.g.
>
> $col = 2;
> $asc = 1; // -1 for descending order
>
> function cmpOrders($a, $b) {
> global $col, $asc;
> return strnatcasecmp($a[$col], $b[$col])*$asc;
> }
>
> uasort($orders, 'cmpOrders');
>
> This would sort by phone numbers, with $col = 0 it would
sort by name.
> It could also be extended to use numeric comparison
instead of string
> comparison when necessary.
>
> The only problem so far are the dates. It would really
help if they
> would be stored as "YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm" or at least as
Unix timestamps.
> The format they are currently stored in can't be used
for sorting.
>
> Micha
perfect, this works, thanks a lot Micha. I did stumble upon
uasort, looking in php.net manual but
did not understand how to use it...
Yeah I'll have to reformat the date, no problem.
seb ( [email protected])
http://webtrans1.com | high-end web
design
Downloads: Slide Show, Directory Browser, Mailing List