How Sort a multidimensional (json) array with PHP

Question

Can someone help me please ... I've read previous PHP 'sorting' questions ... and tried to follow the logic ... but brain fade prevails ;-!

I have a json object (from facebook) which I am trying to sort using one of the values ('created_time') using the following code:

$json = file_get_contents($url,0,null,null);
$result = json_decode($json, true);
array_multisort($note['created_time'], SORT_ASC, $result);   /* what's wrong with this line?? */

Example json data shown below:

{
   "data": [
      {
         "id": "123",
         "from": {
            "name": "Example",
            "category": "Musician/band",
            "id": "123"
         },
         "subject": "Subject 1",
         "message": "Example message text 1",
         "created_time": "2011-07-12T20:18:17+0000",
      },
      {
         "id": "123",
         "from": {
            "name": "Example",
            "category": "Musician/band",
            "id": "123"
         },
         "subject": "Subject 2",
         "message": "Example message text 2",
         "created_time": "2011-07-12T20:21:01+0000",
      },
...

Thanks for you help.

Jake · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-13 00:19:03Z

2

Your PHP snippet references a $note object but I just see the $json and $result variables...

Assuming we have the data array available you can use usort with a custom function.. this could be an anonymous function if you are using PHP 5.3+

function sort_by_creation($a, $b) 
{
  return (strtotime($a['created_time']) < strtotime($b['created_time']) ? -1 : 1;
}
usort($data, 'sort_by_creation');

answered Jul 13, 2011 at 0:19

Jake

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1 Comment

Gretsch Player Over a year ago

Whoops - the reference to "$note" is completely spurious/wrong - it come from me playing/trying various things in an attempt to debug what's happening.

thescientist · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-15 13:07:49Z

0

I'm not sure if that will work. Where does $note come from? If you are trying to sort an array by a specific member, what about usort? http://php.net/manual/en/function.usort.php

so something like:

function sortByCreatedTime($a, $b){
  if ($strtotime($a['data']['created_time']) == strtotime($b['data']['created_time'])) {
    return 0;
  };
  return ($strtotime($a['data']['created_time']) < strtotime($b['data']['created_time'])) ? -1 : 1;
};
usort($result, sortByCreatedTime);
for($i = 0; $i < count($results['data']); $i++){
  //should output in descending order.  if not just change 
  //the < to a > in the sort function above
  echo 'time is => ' . $results['data']['created_time'] . '<br>';
};

edited Jul 15, 2011 at 13:07

answered Jul 13, 2011 at 0:21

thescientist

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2 Comments

Gretsch Player Over a year ago

Thanks for your help @Jake & @thescientist, but I havn't been able to get either of your suggestions to work for me ... Could you try again, now that I've admitted that '$note' was completely spurious. To recap - my array is called $result and the data within it is caled 'data' - and within that the field I need to sort is called 'created_time' Thanks again.

thescientist Over a year ago

hey, forget to take into consideration the inner 'data' array. see if the above edit helps. not sure which way you needed it sorted, ASC vs. DESC, but as noted in the comments, it's just a switch of the gt/lt sign.

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