Is it possible in PHP to do something like this? How would you go about writing a function? Here is an example. The order is the most important thing.
$customer['address'] = '123 fake st';
$customer['name'] = 'Tim';
$customer['dob'] = '12/08/1986';
$customer['dontSortMe'] = 'this value doesnt need to be sorted';
And I'd like to do something like
$properOrderedArray = sortArrayByArray($customer, array('name', 'dob', 'address'));
Because at the end I use a foreach() and they're not in the right order (because I append the values to a string which needs to be in the correct order and I don't know in advance all of the array keys/values).
I've looked through PHP's internal array functions but it seems you can only sort alphabetically or numerically.
Just use array_merge or array_replace. Array_merge works by starting with the array you give it (in the proper order) and overwriting/adding the keys with data from your actual array:
$customer['address'] = '123 fake st';
$customer['name'] = 'Tim';
$customer['dob'] = '12/08/1986';
$customer['dontSortMe'] = 'this value doesnt need to be sorted';
$properOrderedArray = array_merge(array_flip(array('name', 'dob', 'address')), $customer);
//Or:
$properOrderedArray = array_replace(array_flip(array('name', 'dob', 'address')), $customer);
//$properOrderedArray -> array('name' => 'Tim', 'address' => '123 fake st', 'dob' => '12/08/1986', 'dontSortMe' => 'this value doesnt need to be sorted')
ps - I'm answering this 'stale' question, because I think all the loops given as previous answers are overkill.
There you go:
function sortArrayByArray(array $array, array $orderArray) {
$ordered = array();
foreach ($orderArray as $key) {
if (array_key_exists($key, $array)) {
$ordered[$key] = $array[$key];
unset($array[$key]);
}
}
return $ordered + $array;
}