PHP Sort a multidimensional array by element containing date

Question

I have an array such as:

Array
(
[0] => Array
    (
        [id] => 2
        [type] => comment
        [text] => hey
        [datetime] => 20         


        

Answer 1

http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.array-multisort.php see third example:

<?php

$data[] = array('volume' => 67, 'edition' => 2);
$data[] = array('volume' => 86, 'edition' => 1);
$data[] = array('volume' => 85, 'edition' => 6);
$data[] = array('volume' => 98, 'edition' => 2);
$data[] = array('volume' => 86, 'edition' => 6);
$data[] = array('volume' => 67, 'edition' => 7);

foreach ($data as $key => $row) {
    $volume[$key]  = $row['volume'];
    $edition[$key] = $row['edition'];
}

array_multisort($volume, SORT_DESC, $edition, SORT_ASC, $data);

?>

fyi, using a unix (seconds from 1970) or mysql timestamp (YmdHis - 20100526014500) would be be easier for the parser but i think in your case it makes no difference.

Answer 2

You can simply solve this problem using usort() with callback function. No need to write any custom function.

$your_date_field_name = 'datetime';
usort($your_given_array_name, function ($a, $b) use (&$your_date_field_name) {
    return strtotime($a[$your_date_field_name]) - strtotime($b[$your_date_field_name]);
});

Answer 3

This should work. I converted the date to unix time via strtotime.

  foreach ($originalArray as $key => $part) {
       $sort[$key] = strtotime($part['datetime']);
  }
  array_multisort($sort, SORT_DESC, $originalArray);

---

One-liner version would be using multiple array methods:

array_multisort(array_map('strtotime',array_column($originalArray,'datetime')),
                SORT_DESC, 
                $originalArray);

Answer 4

For 'd/m/Y' dates:

usort($array, function ($a, $b, $i = 'datetime') { 
    $t1 = strtotime(str_replace('/', '-', $a[$i]));
    $t2 = strtotime(str_replace('/', '-', $b[$i]));

    return $t1 > $t2;
});

where $i is the array index