Question

I am trying to figure out a way to correctly sort a bunch of different arraylists.
I am publishing content articles and every value [0] in an arraylist will relate to every other value [0]. and so on. Each element makes up the collective parts of a complete content item.

Now, the last element, popularity, is the amount of clicks an item has received. How do I
do a sort of the content items based on popularity without mixing up the html for each article?

*EDIT I am limited by the .NET 2.0 Framework at Work*

Below is the code… thanks.

public class MultiDimDictList : Dictionary<string, ArrayList> { } 

myDicList.Add("fly", a_fly);
myDicList.Add("img", a_img);
myDicList.Add("bar", a_bar);
myDicList.Add("meter", a_meter);
myDicList.Add("block", a_block);
myDicList.Add("popularity", a_pop);

Answer 1

If you use the following code you can convert your existing dictionary of arraylists into a collection of Dictionaries and thus allowing a simple sort using Linq OrderBy

// Get the shortest arraylist length (they should be equal this is just a paranoia check!)
var count=myDicList.Values.Min(x=>x.Count); 
// Get the collection of Keys
var keys=myDicList.Keys;
// Perform the conversion
var result=Enumerable.Range(0,count).Select(i=>keys.Select(k=>new {Key=k,Value=myDicList[k][i]}).ToDictionary(x=>x.Key,x=>x.Value)); 

var sorted=result.OrderByDescending(x=>x["popularity"]).ToList()

— EDIT VERSION FOR .NET 2.0

First you need a comparer class

class PopularityComparison : IComparer<Dictionary<string,object>> {
    private bool _sortAscending;

    public PopularityComparison(bool sortAscending) {
        _sortAscending = sortAscending;
    }

    public int Compare(Dictionary<string, object> x, Dictionary<string, object> y) {
        object xValue = x["popularity"];
        object yValue = y["popularity"];

        // Sort Ascending
        if (_sortAscending) {
            return Comparer.Default.Compare(xValue, yValue);
        } else {
            return Comparer.Default.Compare(yValue, xValue);
        }

    }
}

Then you can use the following code

// Get the shortest arraylist length (they should be equal this is just a paranoia check!) 
// Replacement for min 
int count = int.MaxValue;
foreach (ArrayList a in myDicList.Values) if (a.Count < count) count = a.Count;
// Get the collection of Keys 
Dictionary<string, ArrayList>.KeyCollection keys = myDicList.Keys;
// Perform the conversion 
List<Dictionary<string, object>> result = new List<Dictionary<string, object>>(count);
for (int i = 0; i < count; i++) {
  Dictionary<string, object> row = new Dictionary<string, object>(keys.Count);
  foreach (string key in keys) row.Add(key, myDicList[key][i]);
  result.Add(row);
}

And then finally to sort in ascending popularity order

result.Sort(new PopularityComparison(true));

or Descending order

result.Sort(new PopularityComparison(true));