Sort JSON alphabetically

Question

I have a JSON object generated based on data stored in a table. I then need to be able to sort it in different ways, but when I do JSON.stringify(array) and try to sort from there it doesn't work. When I try to just do array.sort(); it will change the order, but ultimately doesn't work. I don't have much experience with JSON and how to operate it so I'm not sure what else to try. After sorting it I need to go through and rewrite the table with the selected category in alphabetical order.

The JSON looks like this:

var arr = [{
"Functional Category":"T-Shirt",
"Brand Name":"threadless",
"When Obtained":"Last 3 Months",
"How Obtained":"Purchased",
"How Often Worn":"Monthly",
"Where It's Made":"India",
"Has a Graphic":"Yes"}]

I have a fiddle setup here: http://jsfiddle.net/Skooljester/88HVZ/1/ and I have tried what was suggested here but was unable to make it work.

I have two questions, one: how do I go about accomplishing this, and two: is there a better way to do the sorting?

Answer 1

see below code ....

function sortObject(o) {
    var sorted = {},
    key, a = [];

    for (key in o) {
        if (o.hasOwnProperty(key)) {
                a.push(key);
        }
    }

    a.sort();

    for (key = 0; key < a.length; key++) {
        sorted[a[key]] = o[a[key]];
    }
    return sorted;
}

Does that help?

Answer 2

First, define a compare function:

function compare(el1, el2, index) {
  return el1[index] == el2[index] ? 0 : (el1[index] < el2[index] ? -1 : 1);
}

Then, to sort the array on the first column, use this:

array.sort(function(el1,el2){
  return compare(el1, el2, "Functional Category")
});

Or, to sort on the first column A-Z, and on the second column Z-A if the first column is equal:

array.sort(function(el1,el2){
  var compared = compare(el1, el2, "Functional Category")
  return compared == 0 ? -compare(el1, el2, "Brand Name") : compared;
});

Answer 3

The Mozilla developer documentation has a helpful explanation of the sort function. You can provide a function as a parameter that tells the browser how to do the sort.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/sort

Some pseudo-code from that link, with the myArray.sort call added and the function name removed:

myArray.sort(function(a, b) {
  if (a is less than b by some ordering criterion)
     return -1;
  if (a is greater than b by the ordering criterion)
     return 1;
  // a must be equal to b
  return 0;
});

EDIT: It looks like you have a single-element array with an object as the element. Objects are unordered. You have to transform it to an array before it can be sorted. Try this (with the Object.keys and Array.prototype.map functions added via augment.js for older browsers):

var result = Object.keys(myArray[0]).sort().map(function(key) {
    return [key,myArray[0][key]];
});

This will give you a sorted, nested array of the form:

[["Brand Name","threadless"],
 ["Function Category","T-Shirt"],
 ...
]