Question

I have an array which contains a Month field which is just a string as below:

Array
(
    [0] => stdClass Object
        (
            [id] => 1
            [Month] => Jan-13
        )

    [1] => stdClass Object
        (
            [id] => 2
            [Month] => Jan-14
        )

    [2] => stdClass Object
        (
            [id] => 3
            [Month] => Jul-12
        )

)

How can I sort this array into date order?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Obviously you need custom sorting so use usort. That leaves us with comparator. The not-that-pretty way might look like these:

function datescompare($a, $b) {
    $a = str_replace('-', ' 20', $a->Month); //changing year to full number to avoid treating it as day number
    $b = str_replace('-', ' 20', $b->Month); //same with $b

    $a = strtotime($a); //dirty, but works
    $b = strtotime($b);

    return ($a-$b);
}

example call:

uasort($array, 'datescompare');

You’d probably want to add some validation (if year might be before 2000, if the string is incorrect etc), but the above should roughly work.