I'm currently sorting an array of objects based on a custom set of criteria. The data looks like:
// Array to Sort
Object
$key = value1
Object
$key = value2
Object
$key = value3
Object
$key = value4
// Comparison Object
Sorter
$data = array('value1', 'value2', 'value4', 'value3');
I'm trying to reduce the number of loops, and figured there should be an easier/faster way to do this. I DO NOT want to add custom values to the objects themselves to sort. The basic idea of this is to be able to extract a custom sort from a previous data set, without doing anything to the objects themselves.
I tried looking into the documentation of array_intersects, etc, but I couldn't find any good method to handle this ....
Here's the code I have currently:
$children = array(
array('key' => 'value1'),
array('key' => 'value2'),
array('key' => 'value3'),
array('key' => 'value4')
);
$comparison = array('value1', 'value2', 'value4', 'value3');
$sorter = array();
// loop 1 -- create a map
foreach ($children as &$child) {
$sorter[] = array(
'sort' => array_search($child['key'], $comparison, true),
'child' => &$child
);
}
// loop 2 -- sort based upon the sort key
usort($sorter, array($this, 'compare'));
// loop 3 (ugh -- I think this can be done in 2 loops)
$output = array();
foreach ($sorter as &$item) {
$output[] = $item['child'];
}
// return
return $output;
// sort function
private function compare( Array $a, Array $b ) {
if( $a['sort'] == $b['sort'] ) { return 0 ; }
return ($a['sort'] < $b['sort']) ? -1 : 1;
}