How to reorder an array by named index

Question

In the function below, the $myrecentposts variable holds a collection of the 5 latest posts. How can I take these 5 posts and reorder them before they are written to the for-loop so that they are ordered by their post-title index in the array?

function getLatestPostsAndSort($post)
{
    $myrecentposts = get_posts(
        array('post__not_in' => get_option('sticky_posts'), 
        'numberposts' => 5
    )
 //NEED TO RESORT THE ARRAY HERE BY [POST-TITLE]
    foreach($myrecentposts as  $idxrecent=>$post)
    {   
    ?><li><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li><?php 
    }
}

PS: the obvious suggestion might be to pull them from the database in the desired order. However, the get_posts() method offers no such option. The default order is by post date (latest first). If I change the order to "title", it does not take post date into consideration and rather just pulls the entire post collection and orders them by title.

possible duplicate of [PHP sort multidimensional array by value](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2699086/php-sort-multidimensional-array-by-value) — thetaiko, Jun 23 '11 at 21:28
@konforce - the_title() is a built in method of the $post object — Scott B, Jun 23 '11 at 21:32
That's wordpress. the_title() refers to a global variable named $post. - hi scott btw. doesn't wordpress answers work any longer? — hakre, Jun 23 '11 at 21:34
@Scott B, is that the actual code? Because as written, it's simply a global function not attached to any object. Is `$post` an object or an array? The answer depends on what `$post` really is... Giving us the response of `var_dump()` on it should help. @hakre, Okay, that's weird. — Matthew, Jun 23 '11 at 21:34
@hakre - hi there. Better answers here on PHP centric ?s :-) — Scott B, Jun 23 '11 at 21:36
@Scott B, my answer should work for you then. You may need to alter it a bit to reflect what the `$post` object actually looks like. — Matthew, Jun 23 '11 at 21:41

Matthew · Accepted Answer · 2011-06-23T21:37:47.063

Generally speaking, you can sort an array like:

usort($myrecentposts, function($a, $b) {
   return strcmp($a['title'], $b['title']); 
});

You need to adjust title to be whatever the actual name of the key is.

If this is wordpress, then based on a quick Google search, it looks like it might be:

usort($myrecentposts, function($a, $b) {
   return strcmp($a->post_title, $b->post_title); 
});

If you don't have PHP 5.3, then you'll need to move that anonymous function into a real one like:

function sort_post_by_title($a, $b) {
   return strcmp($a->post_title, $b->post_title); 
}
usort($myrecentposts, 'sort_post_by_title');

Works great Konforce. Thanks a million! – Scott B Jun 23 '11 at 22:03 — Scott B, Jun 23 '11 at 22:03

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 23 '11 at 21:25

1

http://php.net/manual/en/function.usort.php

You need to use usort();

answered Jun 23 '11 at 21:25

Steve Nguyen

5,854
5
21
39

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 23 '11 at 21:27

0

You can use php's usort function: http://php.net/manual/en/function.usort.php

answered Jun 23 '11 at 21:27

xaph

663
5
15

How to reorder an array by named index

3 Answers3