PHP - Sorting an array of arrays by date time.

Hi,

Maybe

function date_compare($a, $b)
{
    $t1 = strtotime($a['5']);
    $t2 = strtotime($b['5']);
    return $t1 - $t2;
}    
usort($array, 'date_compare');

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Regards

You date format is not sortable because it is in day/month/year format.  One of the reasons for using YYYY-MM-DD format is that it is sortable without changing it.  '14/03/2015 14:04:36' becomes '2015-03-14 14:04:36'.

... a better data structure to use that would make it easier?

Yes, there is and you will find it easier to use.  It's the ISO-8601 standard format for date and time.

PHP's ways of handling date and time values are described in this article.
https://www.experts-exchange.com/Web_Development/Web_Languages-Standards/PHP/A_201-Handling-date-and-time-in-PHP-and-MySQL.html

The ISO-8601 standard removes ambiguity about date and time values.  Considering the sample data above, what is "7?"  There is no context that tells us whether it represents a day or a minute.  Without that, sorting is likely to yield suboptimal results.

Array position zero has all the information you need - it just has to be put in the correct order.  Instead of this:

14/03/2015 14:04:36

... rewrite it like this ...

2015-03-14 14:04:36

That is an ISO-8601 datetime string meaning March 14, 2015 at 2:04:36 pm.  PHP makes it easy to change date / time formats.  The article explains all of this stuff.

Once you have the data in the correct format, you can sort it with any of a variety of PHP algorithms.  If you can post a few more rows of the test data set, I'll be glad to give you a tested and working example showing how to sort them.

Hi all,

I have re-formatted the date/time by splitting it and putting it back together.

$parts = preg_split("/[\s:\/]/", $dateTimeString);
$dateTimeString = $parts[2]."-".$parts[1]."-".$parts[0]." ".$parts[3].":".$parts[4].":".$parts[5];

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The data now looks like this.

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => 2015-03-17 00:04:36
            [1] => 146
            [2] => 41
            [3] => 0
            [4] => X
            [5] => 189
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [0] => 2015-03-14 00:19:36
            [1] => 146
            [2] => 41
            [3] => 0
            [4] => X
            [5] => 213
        )

    [2] => Array
        (
            [0] => 2015-03-11 00:34:36
            [1] => 146
            [2] => 41
            [3] => 0
            [4] => X
            [5] => 323
        )

    [3] => Array
        (
            [0] => 2015-03-14 17:49:36
            [1] => 146
            [2] => 78442
            [3] => 0
            [4] => X
            [5] => 95
        )
)

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I then modified Rgonzo1971 function to sort it. I think it works.

usort($arrayOfRecords, 'date_compare');
function date_compare($a, $b)
{
    $t1 = strtotime($a['0']);
    $t2 = strtotime($b['0']);
    return $t1 - $t2;
} 

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Is that the best way to go about the sorting?

Thank you!