How to sort an associative array by its values in Javascript?

Instead of correcting you on the semantics of an 'associative array', i think this is what you want:

function getSortedKeys(obj) {
    var keys = []; for(var key in obj) keys.push(key);
    return keys.sort(function(a,b){return obj[a]-obj[b]});
}

you dump in an object (like yours) and get an array of the keys - eh properties - back, sorted by the (numerical) value of the, eh, values of the, eh, object.

this only works if your values are numerical. tweek the little function(a,b) in there to change the sorting mechanism to work for string values (for example). left as an exercise for the reader.

$2c, *-pike

Continued discussion & other solutions covered at How to sort an (associative) array by value? with the best solution (for my case) being by saml (quoted below).

Arrays can only have numeric indexes. You'd need to rewrite this as either an Object, or an Array of Objects.

var status = new Array();
status.push({name: 'BOB', val: 10});
status.push({name: 'TOM', val: 3});
status.push({name: 'ROB', val: 22});
status.push({name: 'JON', val: 7});

If you like the status.push method, you can sort it with:

status.sort(function(a,b) {
    return a.val - b.val;
});

There really isn't any such thing as an "associative array" in JavaScript. What you've got there is just a plain old object. They work kind-of like associative arrays, of course, and the keys are available but there's no semantics around the order of keys.

You could turn your object into an array of objects (key/value pairs) and sort that:

function sortObj(object, sortFunc) {
  var rv = [];
  for (var k in object) {
    if (object.hasOwnProperty(k)) rv.push({key: k, value:  object[k]});
  }
  rv.sort(function(o1, o2) {
    return sortFunc(o1.key, o2.key);
  });
  return rv;
}

Then you'd call that with a comparator function.

Here is a variation of ben blank's answer, if you don't like tuples.

This saves you a few characters.

var keys = [];
for (var key in sortme) {
  keys.push(key);
}

keys.sort(function(k0, k1) {
  var a = sortme[k0];
  var b = sortme[k1];
  return a < b ? -1 : (a > b ? 1 : 0);
});

for (var i = 0; i < keys.length; ++i) {
  var key = keys[i];
  var value = sortme[key];
  // Do something with key and value.
}

i use $.each of jquery but you can make it with a for loop, an improvement is this:

        //.ArraySort(array)
        /* Sort an array
         */
        ArraySort = function(array, sortFunc){
              var tmp = [];
              var aSorted=[];
              var oSorted={};

              for (var k in array) {
                if (array.hasOwnProperty(k)) 
                    tmp.push({key: k, value:  array[k]});
              }

              tmp.sort(function(o1, o2) {
                    return sortFunc(o1.value, o2.value);
              });                     

              if(Object.prototype.toString.call(array) === '[object Array]'){
                  $.each(tmp, function(index, value){
                      aSorted.push(value.value);
                  });
                  return aSorted;                     
              }

              if(Object.prototype.toString.call(array) === '[object Object]'){
                  $.each(tmp, function(index, value){
                      oSorted[value.key]=value.value;
                  });                     
                  return oSorted;
              }               
     };

So now you can do

    console.log("ArraySort");
    var arr1 = [4,3,6,1,2,8,5,9,9];
    var arr2 = {'a':4, 'b':3, 'c':6, 'd':1, 'e':2, 'f':8, 'g':5, 'h':9};
    var arr3 = {a: 'green', b: 'brown', c: 'blue', d: 'red'};
    var result1 = ArraySort(arr1, function(a,b){return a-b});
    var result2 = ArraySort(arr2, function(a,b){return a-b});
    var result3 = ArraySort(arr3, function(a,b){return a>b});
    console.log(result1);
    console.log(result2);       
    console.log(result3);

No unnecessary complication required...

function sortMapByValue(map)
{
    var tupleArray = [];
    for (var key in map) tupleArray.push([key, map[key]]);
    tupleArray.sort(function (a, b) { return a[1] - b[1] });
    return tupleArray;
}