Edited question. Validated after 18.Dec.2013.

after more search on SO and google, I decided that probably I need to utilize collator_create and collator_sort functions since my site's language is Turkish and I use UTF-8 encoding.

new position where I am is:

/* fetch values */
$etiket_bulutu = '';
while ($beyan->fetch()) 
{
    $etiket_bulutu .=  $tags.', ';
}

$etiket_bulutu = substr_replace($etiket_bulutu ,'',-2); //omit last {, } chars

$etiketler = explode(", ", $etiket_bulutu); //get each tag as arr

$etiketler = array_unique($etiketler);
$etiketler = array_values($etiketler); //only unique tags without NULLs

$etadet = count($etiketler);

$coll = collator_create('tr_TR'); //from http://www.php.net/manual/en/collator.sort.php
collator_sort($coll, $etiketler);

for($x=0;$x<$etadet;$x++)
 {
  echo $etiketler[$x];
  echo "<br />";
 }

Now, I have no html output and in my error.log file I got this warning "... PHP Warning: sort() expects parameter 2 to be long, string given in ..." and this fatal error "PHP Fatal error: Class 'Collator' not found"

I also googled for these issues but couldn't solve my issue. My PHP version is 5.3.24 waiting for your valuable help. BR

 

 

question until 18.Dec.2013 is below. this is old ver. of my Q.

my input

in my related MySql table, my each article (each table row) has its tags in row's related cell. my tagging format has 2 rules:

1. seperate tags using comma and 1 space character (example: tag1, tag2)
2. if tag has more than 1 word then seperate the words with dash symbol (-).(example: smart-phone, tag2)

as last input, different articles can have same tags of course

my aim

having a page titled "tags", I try to achieve alphabetical sort of all tags and print them with links back to the list of related articles.

I thought the procedure below:

1. get all tags from table and cretae an array which consists of unique tags.
2. execute alphabetical sort
3. visit each element of last form of array to print the tag with the related link

what I tried

note: convert_one_row is a string validation function.

if ($beyan = $db_baglanti->prepare($sorgum)) 
{
    /* bind parameters */
    $beyan -> bind_param("s", $bindparametre1);

/* execute statement */
$beyan->execute();

/* bind result variables */
$beyan->bind_result($etiketler);


echo "\t".''."\r\n";
echo "\t\t".'
'.'Etiketler'.'
'."\r\n";


/* fetch values */
$etiket_bulutu = '';
while ($beyan->fetch()) 
{
    $etiket_bulutu .=  $etiketler.', ';
}


$etiket_bulutu = substr_replace($etiket_bulutu ,'',-2); //en son 2karakteri yani {, } attık
$etiket_bulutu = explode(", ", $etiket_bulutu); //her bir etiketten array yarattık
sort($etiket_bulutu, SORT_NATURAL | SORT_FLAG_CASE);
$etiket_bulutu = array_unique($etiket_bulutu, SORT_STRING); //sadece tekil etiketler kaldı
$bulut = '';
foreach($etiket_bulutu as $etiket)
{$bulut .= ''.convert_one_row($etiket).', ';}
$bulut = substr_replace($bulut ,'',-2); //en son 2karakteri yani {, } attık
echo "\r\n\r\n".'
'.$bulut.'
'."\r\n\r\n";


echo "\t".''."\r\n";

    /* close statement */
    $beyan->close();
}
?>

my current result

I achieved to print tags with related links however alphabetical sort issue has failed. Currently, 1st article's tags are written then 2nd article's tags, 3rd and so on... But there is no alphabetical sorting.

current situation example:

article 1 tags: table, apple, smart-phone

article 2 tags: smart-phone, world, soccer

current situation: table, apple, smart-phone, world, soccer

what I require: apple, smart-phone, soccer, table

Can you please correct me thank you in advance

After asking this question and learning the answer of it, I needed to find a way to sort UTF-8 (Turkish input) string array from MySql db alphabetically.

then I used Fy-'s answer in this link and it worked.

Now, my solution is:

setlocale(LC_COLLATE, 'tr_TR.utf8'); //utf-8 sorting için gerekli
$sorgum = "...";
$bindparametre1 = '...';

if ($beyan = $db_baglanti->prepare($sorgum)) 
{
    /* bind parameters */
    $beyan -> bind_param("s", $bindparametre1);

    /* execute statement */
    $beyan->execute();

    /* bind result variables */
    $beyan->bind_result($etiketler);

echo "\t".'<div class="sol-icerik-kapsar">'."\r\n";
echo "\t\t".'<h1>'.'Etiketler'.'</h1>'."\r\n";

    /* fetch values */
    $etiket_bulutu = '';
    while ($beyan->fetch()) 
    {
        $etiket_bulutu .=  $etiketler.', ';
    }
$etiket_bulutu = substr_replace($etiket_bulutu ,'',-2); //en son 2karakteri yani {, } attık
$etiketler = explode(", ", $etiket_bulutu); //her bir etiketten array yarattık
$etiketler = array_unique($etiketler);
$etiketler = array_values($etiketler); //sadece tekil etiketler kaldı
$etadet = count($etiketler);

usort($etiketler, 'strcoll');

echo "\n\t\t".'<p>'."\n";
for($x=0;$x<$etadet;$x++)
  {
  echo "\t\t\t".'<a href="'.url_validate(sitenin_koku.'etiketler/'.$etiketler[$x]).'">'.convert_one_row($etiketler[$x]).'</a>, '."\n";
  }
echo "\t\t".'</p>'."\n";

key codes for my solution here are : setlocale(LC_COLLATE, 'tr_TR.utf8'); and usort($etiketler, 'strcoll');

regards