Question

I have an array of events… each event has a key called “time”. The “time” key stores a string such as “8:00 AM” or “6:00 PM”.

I need to order this array based on that time key. How would this be possible?

Answer 1

strtotime() can parse things like 8:00 AM. It is your friend.

function cmp_func($a, $b) {
    $atime = strtotime($a['time']);
    $btime = strtotime($b['time']);
    if($atime == $btime) return 0;
    return ($atime < $btime) ? -1 : 1;
}

usort($your_array, 'cmp_func');

Note that if the array(s) you’re sorting in this fashion are very large, it may be worth it to store the value from strtotime() as part of the array beforehand, to reduce the number of calls to it overall.