how to sort a multidemensional array by an inner key

Question

i have this enormous array that i am pulling from an API for BattleField Bad Company 2, and the soldier stats can be pulled as a multi dimensional array with an inner array

Answer 1

In addition to the other answers, if you need to sort by a dynamic field (only known at runtime), you can use an anonymous function and pass it the field via the use keyword:

$field = "some_dynamic_value";

usort($rows, function($a, $b) use ($field) {
    return strcmp($a[$field], $b[$field]);
});

Answer 2

You can use array_multisort for this: first provide the column you want to sort -- with array_column and as second argument the whole array. There are several options possible (see documentation), but for an ascending sort by the "rank" field, it would look like this:

array_multisort(array_column($players, "rank"), $players);

NB: For the data in the actual question here, $players would be &$arr["players"]

Answer 3

You can sort any array by any criteria using usort()

Answer 4

To order descending an array, I used

function sorterdesc($one, $two) {
    return ($two['cont'] - $one['cont']);
}

For ascending :

function sorterasc($one, $two) {
    return ($one['cont'] - $two['cont']);
}

Like this it works fine with numeric values

Answer 5

Here you go.

$playergoop is the array that you provided.

This one sorts by the sub-field 'rank', but it does so in an ascending order. If you want a descending order, you can switch the > to <.

function sorter($one, $two) {
    return ($one['rank'] > $two['rank']);
}

usort($playergoop['players'], sorter);

Answer 6

When you're using PHP 5.3 and above you can use an anonymous inline function for sorting:

usort($obj, function ($a, $b)
{
    return strcmp($a["name"], $b["name"]);
});