How to sort multidimensional array in javascript

Question

I have an array as follows

var arry = [ [1, "Convention Hall", "Mumbai", 10, "XYZ Company"], 
             [2, "Auditorium", "Delhi", 10, "ABC Company"], 
             [3, "CenterHall", "Bangalore", 10, "ZZZ Company"],
            ....
            ]

I want to sort the array alphabetically based on the third item of array i.e arry[n][2]

How to do this.

Answer 1

http://jsfiddle.net/VPrAr/

You can use the arry.sort(). The default is alphanumeric and ascending.

So it would be:

var arry = [ [1, "Convention Hall", "Dangalore", 10, "XYZ Company"], 
             [2, "Auditorium", "Belhi", 10, "ABC Company"], 
             [3, "CenterHall", "Aumbai", 10, "ZZZ Company"],
            ];
var x =arry.sort(function(a,b){ return a[2] > b[2] ? 1 : -1; });
alert(x);

Answer 2

Array.prototype.sort function expects a function as a parameter, which accepts two parameters and returns any of -1, 0 or 1.

I am a very big fan of functional programming, so I came up with this. This offers flexibility.

1. You can sort based on any element
2. You can even reverse the order of sorting
3. You can customize, how the objects have to be compared.

---

function basicComparator(first, second) {
    if (first === second) {
        return 0;
    } else if (first < second) {
        return -1;
    } else {
        return 1;
    }
}

function compareNthElements(n, comparatorFunction, reverse) {
    return function(first, second) {
        if (reverse === true) {
            return comparatorFunction(second[n], first[n]);
        } else {
            return comparatorFunction(first[n], second[n]);
        }
    }
}

Thats it. Now, call the sort function like this

arry.sort(compareNthElements(1, basicComparator, true));  // Sorts first field and in reverse
arry.sort(compareNthElements(2, basicComparator));        // Sorts second field