Question

I want to sort a mutable array by date. My array contains several dict with keys say:key1,key2,birthday.Now, I have to sort by its birthday key:
I know that this can be done using:

NSSortDescriptor *descriptor = [[NSSortDescriptor alloc] initWithKey:@"birthday" ascending:YES]; 
[myArray sortUsingDescriptors:[NSArray arrayWithObjects:descriptor,nil]];

But my problem is that I want to sort only those arrays, which don’t contain empty birthday field. My array will contains several empty birthday fields. I don’t want to sort those.
Finally I have to load these in table view through [self.mTable reloadData];.

Answer 1

First collect the indices of all objetcs without a birthday.

NSIndexSet *indexSet = [NSIndexSet indexSet];
[array enumerateObjectsUsingBlock:^(NSDictionary *dict, NSUInteger idx, BOOL *stop)
{
    if(![[dict allKeys] containsObject:@"birthday"]){
        [indexSet addIndex:idx];
    }
}];

Now remove them from the original array

[array removeObjectsAtIndexes:indexSet];

Using a comparator block, sorting could look like

[array sortUsingComparator: ^(NSDictionary *d1, NSDictionary *d2) {    
    NSDate *date1 = [d1 objectForKey:@"birthday"];
    NSDate *date2 = [d2 objectForKey:@"birthday"];

    return [date1 compare:date2]
}