Ordering PHP array by number of identical objects

Question

Is there anyway to order an array in this way? For example if I had this array:

$array = array("foo", "bar", "item", "item", "foo", "foo");

And I wanted to order it so that it was "foo", "foo", "foo", "item", "item", "bar" is there any way to do that?

Answer 1

Would this do?

$array1 = array_count_values($array);
arsort($array1);
var_dump($array1);

will give you

array(3) {
  ["foo"]=>
  int(3)
  ["item"]=>
  int(2)
  ["bar"]=>
  int(1)
}

or do you necessarily need them as repeated values? if yes, you may go for something like:

usort($array,create_function('$a,$b',
    'return $GLOBALS["array1"][$a]<$GLOBALS["array1"][$b];'));

This is ugly code, but demonstrates the technique. It is also easy to make it good-looking with php 5.3 closures, but I don't know if you're on 5.3. That would look like this:

$acount=array_count_values($array = array("foo", "bar", "item", "item", "foo", "foo"));
usort($array,function($a,$b) use ($acount) { return $acount[$a]<$acount[$b]; });