Category: Development

There have been several moments where I had a rowset from a database as a PHP array, and I had to sort it based on some columns.

$tickets = array(
    array(
        'id' => 13,
        'owner' => 'jachim',
        'time' => '2009-09-25 10:39:42.011612',
        'project' => 'jachim.be',
        'title' => 'Some random ticket'
    ),
    array(
        'id' => 31,
        'owner' => 'jachim',
        'time' => '2009-09-24 14:38:47.945020',
        'project' => 'joggink.be',
        'title' => 'Some other random ticket'
    ),
    array(
        'id' => 22,
        'owner' => 'root',
        'time' => '2009-09-24 10:58:02.904198',
        'project' => 'joggink.be',
        'title' => 'A specific ticket'
    )
);

I searched for functions for a while, and even try to understand/use the array_multisort function, but I never managed to get something working on a simple array (like the one above). The new function msort() should be a solution for this.

The function works normally when you use a string for the second parameter. That way the $sort_flag works like you would expect it. When using an array of keys however, a string key is built to sort the array on. This part could use some improvement.

Here an example of the usage:


var_dump($tickets);

$tickets = msort($tickets, array('owner', 'time'));

var_dump($tickets);


And here’s the function itself:

/**
 * Sort a 2 dimensional array based on 1 or more indexes.
 * 
 * msort() can be used to sort a rowset like array on one or more
 * 'headers' (keys in the 2th array).
 * 
 * @param array        $array      The array to sort.
 * @param string|array $key        The index(es) to sort the array on.
 * @param int          $sort_flags The optional parameter to modify the sorting 
 *                                 behavior. This parameter does not work when 
 *                                 supplying an array in the $key parameter. 
 * 
 * @return array The sorted array.
 */
function msort($array, $key, $sort_flags = SORT_REGULAR) {
    if (is_array($array) && count($array) > 0) {
        if (!empty($key)) {
            $mapping = array();
            foreach ($array as $k => $v) {
                $sort_key = '';
                if (!is_array($key)) {
                    $sort_key = $v[$key];
                } else {
                    // @TODO This should be fixed, now it will be sorted as string
                    foreach ($key as $key_key) {
                        $sort_key .= $v[$key_key];
                    }
                    $sort_flags = SORT_STRING;
                }
                $mapping[$k] = $sort_key;
            }
            asort($mapping, $sort_flags);
            $sorted = array();
            foreach ($mapping as $k => $v) {
                $sorted[] = $array[$k];
            }
            return $sorted;
        }
    }
    return $array;
}