CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpjson
Robert Ross
Robert Ross

Reputation: 1189

Sorting an array with json records by a date property in php?

I have a json file with a field date in it, which is not in a specific format and it should stay like this. I am wondering how can is sort this json with php, so the records with the most recent date appear in the beginning in the json and so on until the end in descending order.

I tried a lot of things, but nothing worked for me.

Here is how the json looks :

    [
      {"fullName":"John Doe","userName":"user2",
       "phone":"+1234124512","email":"[email protected]",
       "date":"2016-11-03","time":"1pm","reason":"some reason",
       "isApproved":1,"label":"success","status":"Approved"}, 
      {"fullName":"Robert Royce","userName":"user1",
       "phone":"+4460475640","email":"[email protected]","date":"2016-11- 17",
        "time":"130pm","reason":"some reason",
       "isApproved":1,"label":"success","status":"Approved"},
      {"fullName":"Pesho Zdr","userName":"user4",
       "phone":"+4560477640","email":"[email protected]","date":"2016-11-17",
       "time":"130pm","reason":"some reason",
       "isApproved":0,"label":"success","status":"Approved"}
    ]

Upvotes: 0

Views: 449

Answers (1)

DonCallisto
DonCallisto

Reputation: 29912

$json = // your json here
$jsonArray = json_decode($json, true);
usort($jsonArray, function ($a, $b) {
    return $a['date'] > $b['date'] ? -1 : 1;
});
$json = json_encode($jsonArray);

First step

First of all transform json into array with json_decode

$jsonArray = json_decode($json, true);

Second parameter is used to indicate that output needs to be an array and not an object

Second step

Order the array; it seems that usort can help you

usort($jsonArray, function ($a, $b) {
    return $a['date'] > $b['date'] ? -1 : 1;
});

This will walk the array from first value to last comparing the first ($a) to the second ($b).
In particular we are interested in date value.
To make usort work as expected, you need to return a value from the closure to tell comparison result. Possible results are

  • 0 to indicate that they have same value
  • < 0 to indicate that first element is smaller than second
  • > 0 to indicate that first element is greater than second

Third step

Finally, convert all back to json format with json_encode

$json = json_encode($jsonArray);

Upvotes: 2

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