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;
}