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up vote 0 down vote favorite

The finished array would look something like this:

array(

'foo bar bar foo' => 10,
'foo' => 10,
'foo bar bar bar foo' => 6,
'foo bar' => 6,
'bar' => 6,
'b' => 5

)

So the values are sorted first by the value, and then by the length of the key.

In MySQL I'd do this: 

SELECT product, qty FROM stock ORDER BY qty DESC, LENGTH(product) DESC

But I'd like to do it in PHP.

share|improve this question
    
also, is there a particular reason you want to do it in PHP? –  Ascherer Dec 21 '11 at 21:09
    
@Ascherer: The data is not present in MySQL, and I want to avoid the transfer time of putting it all in there. My SELECT statement was just an example. –  Drahcir Dec 21 '11 at 21:12
    
ahh, k. That makes sense –  Ascherer Dec 21 '11 at 21:23

3 Answers 3

up vote 3 down vote accepted

Looking at the answers to this question: PHP array multiple sort - by value then by key?, it seems array_multisort is the way to go. (I'm not really sure how array_multisort works, I just kinda hacked this up, and it seems to work).

Try this:

$arr = array(
  'foo bar' => 6,
  'foo' => 10,
  'bar' => 6,
  'b' => 5,
  'foo bar bar bar foo' => 6,
  'foo bar bar foo' => 10
);

array_multisort(array_values($arr), SORT_DESC,
  array_map(create_function('$v', 'return strlen($v);'), array_keys($arr)),
  SORT_DESC, $arr);

Demo: http://codepad.org/mAttNIV7

UPDATE: Added array_map to make it sort by the length of the string, before it was just doing:

$str1 > $str2 instead of strlen($str1) > strlen($str2).

UPDATE 2: In PHP >= 5.3, you can replace create_function with a real anonymous function.

array_map(function($v){return strlen($v);}, array_keys($arr))

Demo 2: http://codepad.viper-7.com/6qrFwj

share|improve this answer
    
hmm, yeah that way works better than mine with the original array, i originally avoided this cause i didnt think it would sort the strings by length, but it looks like it is lol –  Ascherer Dec 21 '11 at 21:24
    
@Ascherer: It was originally sorting the strings by doing $a > $b, it wasn't sorting by length, it just happened to be in that order. I added an array_map to make it sort by legnth. –  Rocket Hazmat Dec 21 '11 at 21:31
    
@Rocket: Thanks for taking time to work this out, you've solved my problem perfectly. –  Drahcir Dec 21 '11 at 21:35
    
@RichardLivingston: You're welcome. Glad I could help. –  Rocket Hazmat Dec 21 '11 at 21:37
    
k, now this way seems messy.... usort makes it cleaner –  Ascherer Dec 21 '11 at 23:23
up vote 3 down vote

take a look at php's usort and uasort.

You should be able to define a function that can sort it like that

Not sure if it would work easily with that current array but this one it would

$array = array(
 array('name' => 'foo bar bar foo', 'qty' => 10 ),
 array('name' => 'foo', 'qty' => 6),
 array('name' => 'foo bar bar foo', 'qty' => 6 ),
 array('name' => 'foo bar', 'qty' => 6 )
);

uasort($array, 'arraySort');

function arraySort($a, $b)
{
    if($a['qty'] > $b['qty'])
        return 1;
    elseif($a['qty'] < $b['qty'])
        return -1;
    else
        if(strlen($a['name']) >= strlen($b['name']))
            return 1;
        else
            return -1;
}
share|improve this answer
up vote -2 down vote

use the sort function in php. make sure you use the TRUE as the second parameter to preserve the keys.

share|improve this answer
    
sort doesn't have a "preserve keys" parameter. If you want to do that, you'd use asort. –  Rocket Hazmat Dec 21 '11 at 21:03

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