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PHP

Posted by Kane Stoboi
Kane Stoboi
21,919 Points

Sorting an array excluding html tags

I have an array of strings, each of which may contain a <i> HTML tag.

E.g.

reference[0] = "<i>some text</i> Some more text";
reference[1] = "this is the second element";
reference[2] = "Some more text";
reference[3] = "<i>another</i> string";

What I would like to do is to sort the array alphabetically but exclude the <i> tags from being included in the sorting.

Any suggestions?

3 Answers

cesare
cesare
15,180 Points 
<?php

// the Function
function compareStrings($a, $b) {
    return strcasecmp(strip_tags($a), strip_tags($b));
}

// your Array
$reference = array("<s>all</s>", "<i>your</i>", "<b>elements</b>");

// the Magic
usort($reference, "compareStrings");

?>
Kane Stoboi
Kane Stoboi
21,919 Points

Thanks cesare, that works really well. I've decided to change the array slightly so it is now like this..

$myArray  = array();

$myArray[0] = array("reference" => "all", "id" => 1);
$myArray[1] = array("reference" => "my", "id" => 2);
$myArray[2] = array("reference" => "elements", "id" => 3);

and I just want to sort by the "reference" key, I'm having trouble modifying the code to do this.

Jeffrey van Rossum
Jeffrey van Rossum
2,994 Points

This is a version that will work with your new array. Thanks to Cesare earlier answer of course.

<?php

// the Function
function compareStrings($a, $b) {
    return strcasecmp(strip_tags($a['reference']), strip_tags($b['reference']));
}

// your Array
$myArray  = array();
$myArray[0] = array("reference" => "all", "id" => 1);
$myArray[1] = array("reference" => "my", "id" => 2);
$myArray[2] = array("reference" => "elements", "id" => 3);

// the Magic
usort($myArray, "compareStrings");

print_r($myArray);

?>
Kane Stoboi
Kane Stoboi
21,919 Points

Thanks a lot guys works a treat!

cesare
cesare
15,180 Points
cesare
cesare
15,180 Points

Use this PHP Native Function to "remove" html tags temporarily:

strip_tags($array[i]);

http://php.net/manual/en/function.strip-tags.php

Jeffrey van Rossum
Jeffrey van Rossum
2,994 Points
Jeffrey van Rossum
Jeffrey van Rossum
2,994 Points

This might not be the best way, but it works:

<?php
// Your array
$reference = array();
$reference[0] = "<i>some text</i> Some more text";
$reference[1] = "this is the second element";
$reference[2] = "z more text";
$reference[3] = "Some more text";
$reference[4] = "B more text";
$reference[5] = "<i>another</i> string";

// Loop and add filtered version
foreach( $reference as $key => $ref ){
    $reference[$key] = array();
    $reference[$key]['html'] = $ref; 
    $reference[$key]['filter'] = strip_tags( $ref ); 
}

// Function to compare
function sort_it( $a, $b ) {
    return strcmp( $a["html"], $b["filter"] );
}

// Sort
usort( $reference, 'sort_it' );

/*
echo '<pre>';
print_r( $reference );
echo '</pre>';
*/

// Loop & echo
foreach ( $reference as $ref ) {
    echo $ref['html'] . '<br>';   
}
?>

Again, this might not be the best way, maybe somebody else knows a better solution.