Sort Array by Key

Question

I have two arrays used in a small game.

If the player gets a score above a certain value their name & score gets output via an UILabel.

NSArray *namesArray = [mainArray objectForKey:@"names"];
NSArray *highScoresArray = [mainArray objectForKey:@"scores"];

I need the UILabels to display with the highest score in descending order, with the corresponding name. I've used an NSSortDescriptor to sort the score values numerically.

NSSortDescriptor *sortDescriptor; sortDescriptor = [[[NSSortDescriptor alloc] initWithKey:@"self" ascending:NO] autorelease];

    NSArray *sortDescriptors = [NSArray arrayWithObject:sortDescriptor];
    NSArray *sortedScore = [[NSArray alloc]init];
    sortedScore = [scoresArray sortedArrayUsingDescriptors:sortDescriptors];

        NSMutableArray *scoreLabels = [NSMutableArray arrayWithCapacity:10];

    [scoreLabels addObject:scoreLabel1];
    ......

            NSUInteger _index = 0;
    for (NSNumber *_number in sortedScore) {
        UILabel *_label = [scoreLabels objectAtIndex:_index];
        _label.text = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d", [_number intValue]];
        _index++;
    }

This works well enough as the scores now display in descending order.

The problem is that I need the corresponding name to also display according in the new sorted order.

I cant use the same sort selector and I don't wont to sort them alphabetically, they need

to correspond to the name/score values that were first input.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

You need to put the name and the score together into a single instance of NSDictionary, and then have an NSArray of those NSDictionary instances. Then when you sort by score, you can pull up the corresponding name.