current community

your communities

more stack exchange communities

company blog
Stack Exchange Inbox Reputation and Badges
tour help
stack overflow careers
Sign up ×
Stack Overflow is a community of 4.7 million programmers, just like you, helping each other. Join them; it only takes a minute:
up vote 5 down vote favorite
1

Possible Duplicate:
Sorting objects in an array by a field value in JavaScript

How can I sort an array of objects numerically (by id) then alphabetically (by name)?

The current way is providing invalid output.

This is the object i'm trying to sort through

var items = [
    {
        "id": 165,
        "name": "a"
    },
    {
        "id": 236,
        "name": "c"
    },
    {
        "id": 376,
        "name": "b"
    },
    {
        "id": 253,
        "name": "f"
    },
    {
        "id": 235,
        "name": "e"
    },
    {
        "id": 24,
        "name": "d"
    },
    {
        "id": 26,
        "name": "d"
    }
]

and the way i'm trying to sort

items.sort(function(a, b) {
    return (a.id - b.id);
}).sort(function(a, b) {
    return (a.name - b.name);
});

here is the jsfiddle.

http://jsfiddle.net/jh4xb/

EDIT: Sorry for the confusion, I've been so confused by this problem for a while.

What I'm trying to accomplish is to sort by the highest id first, and then sort alphabetically so in the end it should look like:

var items = [
    {
        "id": 376,
        "name": "b"
    },
    {
        "id": 253,
        "name": "f"
    },
    {
        "id": 236,
        "name": "c"
    },
    {
        "id": 235,
        "name": "e"
    },
    {
        "id": 165,
        "name": "a"
    },
    {
        "id": 26,
        "name": "d"
    },
    {
        "id": 24,
        "name": "d"
    }
]
share|improve this question

marked as duplicate by Bergi, Bo Persson, Abizern, Kate Gregory, Paul Fleming Oct 15 '12 at 18:25

This question has been asked before and already has an answer. If those answers do not fully address your question, please ask a new question.
2  
You might need a better example of what you are trying to accomplish because in this example, sorting by id first doesn't make sense since all of the ids and names are unique. It's equivalent to just sort by name. – Bill Oct 15 '12 at 16:41
    
Agreed - what exactly do you want the ordering semantics to be here? – Pointy Oct 15 '12 at 16:42
2  
Not sure what you're hoping to achieve by sorting the list twice. And when you do return (a.name - b.name) you're attempting to subtract one string from another. Ain't gonna happen. (You probably want localeCompare instead.) – Elliot Bonneville Oct 15 '12 at 16:43

5 Answers 5

up vote 14 down vote accepted

I think it's better done just with...

items.sort(function(a, b) { 
  return a.id - b.id  ||  a.name.localeCompare(b.name);
});

The second sort will basically negate the first one, so you have to do it once. )

a.id - b.id || a.name.localeCompare(b.name) expression will first compare the ids; only if they are equal, it will compare the names (and return the result of this comparison).

If you need to reverse the ordering, swap the positions (b.id - a.id, etc.) - or just negate the whole thing:

items.sort(function(a, b) { 
  return - ( a.id - b.id  ||  a.name.localeCompare(b.name) );
});

Here's the JSFiddle (have to simplify the data a bit to show my point).

share|improve this answer
    
Just what I needed! Sorry I wasn't so clear but this is perfect! Thanks! – Dennis Martinez Oct 15 '12 at 17:03
up vote 0 down vote

I'm not seeing any errors in Chrome, but it's not sorting correctly.

If I change your sort code to this:

var firstRun = items.sort(function(a, b) {
    return (a.id - b.id);
});
var secondRun = firstRun.sort(function(a, b) {
    return (a.name - b.name);
});

console.log(secondRun);​

I believe it's sorting correctly. Your example doesn't really need to do the second sort as each number (id) is different. But when I make b, d and e all have an ID of 235, it sorts fine.

share|improve this answer
up vote 2 down vote

IF you mean that you wanted them sorted by id and if the id matches, you want them sorted by name then use this:

items.sort(function(a, b) {
    if (a.id !== b.id) {
        return a.id - b.id
    }
    if (a.name === b.name) {
      return 0;
    }
    return a.name > b.name ? 1 : -1;
});

Otherwise your question is unclear.

share|improve this answer
up vote 0 down vote

your problem is how you're sorting the letters.
a.name - b.name

isn't doing what you think. It's not evaluating them in lexigraphical order. replace it with

a.name < b.name ? -1 : 1;

share|improve this answer
    
Why does your code return 1 if the names are equal? It should return 0 – Bergi Oct 15 '12 at 16:54
    
you're right. Doing it this way does not guarantee that equal elements will retain their original ordering. – BostonJohn Oct 15 '12 at 16:58
up vote 1 down vote

Create a general function to sort it anyway you want. Check the dynamicSort function below 

var items = [
{
 "id": 165,
 "name": "a"},
{
 "id": 236,
 "name": "b"},
{
 "id": 376,
 "name": "c"},
{
 "id": 253,
 "name": "d"},
{
 "id": 235,
 "name": "e"},
{
  "id": 24,
  "name": "f"}
];

function dynamicSort(property) {
   return function(a, b) {
       return (a[property] < b[property]) ? -1 : (a[property] > b[property]) ? 1 : 0;
   }
}

items.sort(dynamicSort('name')).sort(dynamicSort('id'));
console.log(items);
items.sort(dynamicSort('id')).sort(dynamicSort('name')); 
console.log(items);
share|improve this answer

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.