Sort by php array

Question

I need to sort the notification array by the value 'start_date' DESC order from the getNotifications function:

$posts_id_arr = getPoststIds($conn);

foreach ($posts_id_arr as $key => $val) {
  $total_arr[$key] = [
    'notification' => getNotifications($val['post_id'], $user_id, $conn)
  ];
}

$response_array = array('data' => $total_arr, 'more things' => $more_array);
echo json_encode($response_array);

right now the order is by post id due to the foreach loop.

data {
       notification: 
      [
       {
        post_id: “1",
        start_date: "2016-10-10 08:00:00",
       },
       {
        post_id: “1",
        start_date: "2016-10-10 12:00:00",
       }
    ],
     notification:
      [
        post_id: “2",
        start_date: "2016-10-10 09:00:00",
       },
       {
        post_id: “2",
        start_date: "2016-10-10 13:00:00",
       }
    ]
}

And i need it to be 1: 08:00, 2: 09:00, 1: 12:00, 2: 13:00

Answer 1

You can use a custom function to sort the values in the array using uasort. Your date format is sortable using strcmp - a date in the past is lower than a date in the future, so you can use this in your comparator.

function sort_by_date($a, $b) {
  return strcmp($a->start_date, $b->start_date);
}

$sorted_posts = uasort($total_arr->notification, 'sort_by_date');

$response_array = array('data' => $sorted_posts, 'more things' => $more_array);