Group array results in Alphabetic order PHP

Question

I'm using below code to display Image & Name of webisites form database.

<fieldset>  
    <h1>A</h1>          
    <ul>
        <?php foreach ($records as $key) { ?>
        <li class="siteli"> <a href="#" class="add">        
            <div id="site-icon"><img src="<?php echo $key->site_img; ?>" width="16" height=""></div>
            <p id="text-site"> <?php echo $key->site_name; ?></p>
        </li>
        <?php } ?>
    </ul>
</fieldset>

Now I'm trying to group this results alphabetically by adding A, B, C etc as title.

Example,

A    
Amazon     
Aol    
Aol Mail

B    
Bing     
Bogger

Answer 1

You can use array sorting to sort the array. In your case I would choose sort()

Now to show the links with a preceding Letter I would use:

<?php
$records = ['Aaaaa', 'Aaaa2', 'bbb', 'bbb2', 'Dddd'];
$lastChar = '';
sort($records, SORT_STRING | SORT_FLAG_CASE); //the flags are needed. Without the `Ddd` will come before `bbb`.
//Available from version 5.4. If you have an earlier version (4+) you can try natcasesort()

foreach($records as $val) {
  $char = $val[0]; //first char

  if ($char !== $lastChar) {
    if ($lastChar !== '')
      echo '<br>';

    echo strtoupper($char).'<br>'; //print A / B / C etc
    $lastChar = $char;
  }

 echo $val.'<br>';
}
?>

This will output something like

A
Aaaa2
Aaaaa

B
bbb
bbb2

D
Dddd

Notice that the C is missing, because there are no words starting with C.

Answer 2

This is a modification of @Hugo Delsing's answer.

I needed to be able to group my brands together like this, but one bug in the code was the fact that if I had say iForce Nutrition and Inner Armour it would group these into two separate groups because of the letter case.

Changes I Made
Because it was fully alphabetical, it was only going by first letter I changes SORT_STRING to SORT_NATURAL

Changed: if ($char !== $lastChar) to if (strtolower($char) !== strtolower($lastChar))

<?php
$records = ['FinaFlex', 'iForce Nutrition', 'Inner Armour', 'Dymatize', 'Ultimate    Nutrition'];
$lastChar = '';
sort($records, SORT_NATURAL | SORT_FLAG_CASE); //Allows for a full comparison and will alphabetize correctly.

foreach($records as $val) {
 $char = $val[0]; //first char

  if (strtolower($char) !== strtolower($lastChar)) {
    if ($lastChar !== '')
     echo '<br>';

     echo strtoupper($char).'<br>'; //print A / B / C etc
     $lastChar = $char;
    }

    echo $val.'<br>';
  }
?>

The final output will be like this

D
Dymatize

F
FinaFlex

I
iForce Nutrition
Inner Armour

U
Ultimate Nutrition

I hope this helps everyone, and a big thank you to Hugo for providing the code that got me exactly where I needed to be.

You can see my example here https://hyperionsupps.com/brand-index