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15 years ago
A nice way to do sorting of a key on a multi-dimensional array without having to know what keys you have in the array first:



<?php

$people = array(

array("name"=>"Bob","age"=>8,"colour"=>"red"),

array("name"=>"Greg","age"=>12,"colour"=>"blue"),

array("name"=>"Andy","age"=>5,"colour"=>"purple"));



var_dump($people);



$sortArray = array();



foreach($people as $person){

    foreach($person as $key=>$value){

        if(!isset($sortArray[$key])){

            $sortArray[$key] = array();

        }

        $sortArray[$key][] = $value;

    }

}



$orderby = "name"; //change this to whatever key you want from the array



array_multisort($sortArray[$orderby],SORT_DESC,$people);



var_dump($people);

?>



Output from first var_dump:



[0]=&gt;

  array(3) {

    ["name"]=&gt;

    string(3) "Bob"

    ["age"]=&gt;

    int(8)

    ["colour"]=&gt;

    string(3) "red"

  }

  [1]=&gt;

  array(3) {

    ["name"]=&gt;



    string(4) "Greg"

    ["age"]=&gt;

    int(12)

    ["colour"]=&gt;

    string(4) "blue"

  }

  [2]=&gt;

  array(3) {

    ["name"]=&gt;

    string(4) "Andy"

    ["age"]=&gt;

    int(5)

    ["colour"]=&gt;



    string(6) "purple"

  }

}



Output from 2nd var_dump:



array(3) {

  [0]=&gt;

  array(3) {

    ["name"]=&gt;

    string(4) "Greg"

    ["age"]=&gt;

    int(12)

    ["colour"]=&gt;

    string(4) "blue"

  }

  [1]=&gt;

  array(3) {

    ["name"]=&gt;



    string(3) "Bob"

    ["age"]=&gt;

    int(8)

    ["colour"]=&gt;

    string(3) "red"

  }

  [2]=&gt;

  array(3) {

    ["name"]=&gt;

    string(4) "Andy"

    ["age"]=&gt;

    int(5)

    ["colour"]=&gt;



    string(6) "purple"

  }



There's no checking on whether your array keys exist, or the array data you are searching on is actually there, but easy enough to add.
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