Question

Please have a quick read of this question first: Separating a list of entries by the first letter in a given field

Onto the main body of the question.

I am trying to sort several titles in a given array. Currently, they are echoed out alphabetically, however, the current code does not achieve one other aim: to display the alphabetical letter for its grouping. Example below:

A
=====================================
 - Alice's Adventured in Wonderland
 - Animal Farm

B
=====================================
 - Beyond the Chocolate War

and so forth.

Current, the code displays as so:

Alice's Adventured in Wonderland
Animal Farm
Beyond the Chocolate War

As you can see, I need to now categorise by Alphabetic letters. Another example of the HTML output is seen here: http://wiki.solusvm.com/index.php/Category:Documentation (note that I only need it to display category + titles like that, HTML output)

Here’s the code I’ve got so far:

<?php

function shamil_title_compare($a, $b) {
    return strcasecmp($a['title'], $b['title']);
}

usort($entries, 'shamil_title_compare');

$alphabetized = array();
foreach (range('A', 'Z') as $letter) {
    $alphabetized[$letter] = array();
}

foreach ($entries as $entry) {
    $title = $entry['title'];
    $firstWord = strtok($title, ' ');
    if (!in_array($firstWord, array('The', 'A'))) {
         $alphabetized[$firstWord[0]][] = $entry;
    } else {
        $nextWord = strtok(' ');
        if ($nextWord !== false) {
            $alphabetized[$nextWord[0]][] = $entry;
        } else {
            $alphabetized[$firstWord[0]][] = $entry;
        }
    }
       echo $entry['title']."<br/>";
}

What do I do now?

Answer 1

I would add each new letter to an array right before echo $entry['title']."<br/>";

$letter = substr($entry['title'],0,1);
if(!in_array($letter, $lettersArray) || count($lettersArray) == 0){
    array_push($lettersArray,$letter);
    echo $letter.'<p><hr /></p>';
}
echo $entry['title']."<br/>";

This checks to see if the letter is already in the array, if not it adds it and prints it out.