How do you sort an array alphabetically using sort_by in ruby?

Question

I have an array of memberships. In each membership is a group. I need to sort this array of memberships by the name of the group. I've tried a bunch of different ways, and the latest way is this:

@memberships.sort_by! { |m| m.group.name } 

However, this doesn't sort by the name. It appears to be randomly sorting the array.

• Membership belongs_to :group
• Group has_many :memberships

@memberships is equal to:

[   {   id: 2141,   user_id: 491,   group_id: 271,   member_type: "member",     group: {       id: 271,       name: "Derek's",       privacy: "open",       bio_image_url: "/bio_images/medium/missing.png?1340285189",       member_count: 1,       upcoming_checkins_count: 0     }   },   {   id: 2201,   user_id: 221,   group_id: 291,   member_type: "member",     group: {       id: 291,       name: "Rounded Developement",       privacy: "closed",       bio_image_url: "/groups/medium/291/bioimage.jpg?1340736175",       member_count: 7,       upcoming_checkins_count: 0    } } ] 

NOTE: This does work --> @memberships.sort_by! { |m| m.group.id }

It will order the array based on the group.id so maybe it has something to do with sorting alphabetically?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

Wow, after struggling with this for an extremely long time, I realized my problem was a simple one. I was sorting by group.name but some of the group names were uppercase and some were lower, which was throwing it all off. Converting everything to downcase worked well.

@memberships.sort_by!{ |m| m.group.name.downcase }