Question

I have an array containing strings of this format:

[0] => "title|url|score|user|date"
[1] => "title|url|score|user|date"
[2] => "title|url|score|user|date"
[3] => "title|url|score|user|date"
...

The score field is an int that is not always unique (for example, more than one entry can have a score of 0). I’m looking to sort the strings in this array based on their score value. Originally, I tried iterating through the array and making a new one with keys corresponding to the vote score. I soon realized that you can’t have duplicate keys in an array.

Is there a good clean way of doing this?

Answer 1

$array = array(
    0 => "title|url|12|user|date",
    1 => "title|url|0|user|date",
    2 => "title|url|13|user|date",
    3 => "title|url|0|user|date"
);

function sortOnScore( $a, $b )
{
    // discard first two values
    list( ,,$scoreA ) = explode( '|', $a );
    list( ,,$scoreB ) = explode( '|', $b );

    return $scoreA == $scoreB ? 0 : ( $scoreA > $scoreB ? 1 : -1 );
}

usort( $array, 'sortOnScore' );

var_dump( $array );