[SOLVED] Sort rows of a 2d array by one column or another (if the first column doesn't exist)

Sort rows of a 2d array by one column or another (if the first column doesn't exist)

In my application I'm performing a keyword search on two different tables and on two different column names. I want to combine the movies.title and the people.title so that I can sort all of them together alphabetically. Currently I merge my two queries and the results come back first with the movies and then with the people.

public function get_from_keyword($keyword)
{ 
    $movie_query = $this->db
    ->select('id, title, release_year')
    ->from('movies')
    ->like('movies.title', $keyword)
    ->where('movies.id IS NOT NULL', null)
    ->get()
    ->result();

    $person_query = $this->db
    ->select('name, person_id')
    ->from('people')
    ->like('name', $keyword)
    ->get()
    ->result();

    $merged_queries = array_merge($movie_query, $person_query);
    return $merged_queries;
}

I'm not sure if I need to dynamically alter one of the column names in the SELECT query in order to merge them together.

Solution

Try use an "AS" to name both the movies.title and the people.name fields the same like:

   $person_query = $this->db
    ->select('name', 'MySortTitle') // AS
    ->select('person_id')
    ->from('people')
    ->like('name', $keyword)
    ->get()
    ->result();

And the same for the movie query:

    $movie_query = $this->db
    ->select('title', 'MySortTitle') // AS
    ->select('id, release_year')
    ->from('movies')
    ->like('movies.title', $keyword)
    ->where('movies.id IS NOT NULL', null)
    ->get()
    ->result();

Then sort the merged array by MySortTitle.