I have an array with ID's as the key and a name from a database associated with it. I use this to get statistics from PHP for output to a Google Chart generated in JavaScript (through JSON). In PHP I have the following array:
$a = [
'33' => 'first',
'25' => 'second',
'14' => 'last
];
If I run the following code:
foreach( $a as $key => $val )
echo "$key => $val" . PHP_EOL;
I get the following (expected) result
33 => first
25 => second
14 => last
I use AJAX and JSON to send this to a JavaScript environment, here it becomes an object. Now when I run the following JavaScript:
for( var i in a )
console.log( i + " => " + a[i] );
I get
14 => last
25 => second
33 => first
so my keys are interpreted as integers and sorted in JavaScript, which in this case means the array with statistics I was sending to Google Chart is matching up with the wrong labels.
I solved this by sorting the array in PHP before I read the statistics from the database. I needed the keys to stay the same though, this is what I did in PHP:
$tmp = array_flip( $a );
asort( $tmp );
$a = array_flip( $tmp );
this gives me the array in PHP like this:
[
'14' => 'last',
'25' => 'second',
'33' => 'first'
]
so now a foreach
in PHP will have the same order as a for( i in ...)
in JavaScript. I was wondering if there is either a nicer way of sorting my array in PHP instead of flipping it twice -or- if there's an option for a loop in JavaScript that doesn't order the (admittedly confusing) integer value keys of my array?
Have you tried ksort?
ksort
(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7) ksort — Sort an array by key
Description
bool ksort ( array &$array [, int $sort_flags = SORT_REGULAR ] ) Sorts an array by key, maintaining key to data correlations. This is useful mainly for associative arrays.
If it doesn't deal well with numeric-strings keys you can use uksort and write your compare function with a parseInt
and spaceship operator (<=>
).
If you, however, want to simply stop the reordering fully, altought you can't stop the "sorting" of the object by its keys (and note that it is not standard and is browser-dependent: not all of them will sort it), you can always use pairs inside an array to avoid changes to your original order of elements (pairs, in this case):
$a = [
['33', 'first'],
['25', 'second'],
['14', 'last']
];