I came up with an easy way to sort database-style results. This does what example 3 does, except it takes care of creating those intermediate arrays for you before passing control on to array_multisort().
<?php
function array_orderby()
{
$args = func_get_args();
$data = array_shift($args);
foreach ($args as $n => $field) {
if (is_string($field)) {
$tmp = array();
foreach ($data as $key => $row)
$tmp[$key] = $row[$field];
$args[$n] = $tmp;
}
}
$args[] = &$data;
call_user_func_array('array_multisort', $args);
return array_pop($args);
}
?>
The sorted array is now in the return value of the function instead of being passed by reference.
<?php
$data[] = array('volume' => 67, 'edition' => 2);
$data[] = array('volume' => 86, 'edition' => 1);
$data[] = array('volume' => 85, 'edition' => 6);
$data[] = array('volume' => 98, 'edition' => 2);
$data[] = array('volume' => 86, 'edition' => 6);
$data[] = array('volume' => 67, 'edition' => 7);
$sorted = array_orderby($data, 'volume', SORT_DESC, 'edition', SORT_ASC);
?>
