How do I sort a PHP array by an element nested inside?

Question

I have an array like the following:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            'name' => "Friday"
            'weight' => 6
        )
    [1] => Array
        (
            'name' => "Monday"
            'weight' => 2
        )
)

I would like to grab the last values in that array (the 'weight'), and use that to sort the main array elements. So, in this array, I'd want to sort it so the 'Monday' element appears before the 'Friday' element.

Answer 1

You can use usort as:

function cmp($a, $b) {
   return $a['weight'] - $b['weight'];
}

usort($arr,"cmp");

Answer 2

try this: http://php.net/manual/en/function.usort.php

Answer 3

Agree with usort, I also sometimes use array_multisort (http://ca2.php.net/manual/en/function.usort.php) example 3, sorting database results. You could do something like:

<?php
$days = array(
  array('name' => 'Friday', 'weight' => 6),
  array('name' => 'Monday', 'weight' => 2),
);

$weight = array();
foreach($days as $k => $d) {
  $weight[$k] = $d['weight'];
}

print_r($days);

array_multisort($weight, SORT_ASC, $days);

print_r($days);
?>

Output:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [name] => Friday
            [weight] => 6
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [name] => Monday
            [weight] => 2
        )

)
Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [name] => Monday
            [weight] => 2
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [name] => Friday
            [weight] => 6
        )

)

Answer 4

Here's a cool function that might help:

function subval_sort($a,$subkey,$sort) {
    foreach($a as $k=>$v) {
        $b[$k] = strtolower($v[$subkey]);
    }
    if($b)
    {
        $sort($b);
        foreach($b as $key=>$val) {
            $c[] = $a[$key];
        }
        return $c;
    }
}

Send in the array as $a the key as $subkey and 'asort' or 'sort' for the $sort variable