My Multidimensional Fiasco

jmarco

$query = "SELECT school, city, state, id FROM ls_survey_school";
$result = mysql_query($query, $link)
  or die("QUERY-1 Failed: ".mysql_error());

// BEGIN TO INDEX THE RESULTS INTO ARRAYS //
$i = 0;

while ($data = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {

  $school[$i] = $data['school'];
  $city[$i] = $data['city'];
  $state[$i] = $data['state'];
  $id[$i] = $data['id'];

  $query_2 = "SELECT students, contacts, budget, school_year FROM ls_survey_budget WHERE parent_id='".$data['id']."' ORDER BY id";
  $result_2 = mysql_query($query_2, $link)
    or die("QUERY-2 Failed: ".mysql_error());

  while ($data_2 = mysql_fetch_assoc($result_2)) {
    $students[$i] = $data_2['students'];
    $contacts[$i] = $data_2['contacts'];
    $budget[$i] = $data_2['budget'];
    $school_year[$i] = $data_2['school_year'];
  }

  mysql_free_result($result_2);

  $listing[$i] = array($school[$i], $city[$i], $state[$i], $students[$i], $contacts[$i], $budget[$i], $school_year[$i], $id[$i]);

  $i++;

}
mysql_free_result($result);

print_r($listing);

Outputs my fake simulated data as:

Array ( 
 [0] =>
  Array ( 
  [0] => University of Legal Services 
  [1] => St. Louis 
  [2] => MO 
  [3] => 28575 
  [4] => 2215 
  [5] => 535000 
  [6] => 2015-2016 
  [7] => 1 ) 
 [1] => 
  Array ( 
  [0] => University of Marconia 
  [1] => Oakville 
  [2] => MO 
  [3] => 32000 
  [4] => 1375 
  [5] => 650000 
  [6] => 2003-2004 
  [7] => 2 ) 
 [2] => 
  Array ( 
  [0] => Georgetown University 
  [1] => Georgetown 
  [2] => GA 
  [3] => 27500 
  [4] => 625 
  [5] => 250000 
  [6] => 2003-2004 
  [7] => 3 )
)

Is what I want to do, is be able to sort the array $listing by whatever is listed in $listing[][$num]...

"ORDER BY" in MySQL won't suit my needs in this case so what is the PHP-Way to solve this problem:

sort $listing by $listing[][$i]... how is that done?

So if I want to sort $listing by the budget size of these schools I can say:
sort listing by what is in $listing[][5]

agh! Help Please! This is probably simpler than I'm making it out to be for myself, but I'm stuck and in a bind! Please help!

Weedpacket

Taking your word for it about the unsuitability of ORDER BY, here is a very similar question that was asked fairly recently.

twilson

Here's an idea for you to think about:

What if you made the ID of the school the 2nd dimension???

Example: $Listing[0][$ID] = "$Name";

OR Better yet:

$Listing['Name'][$ID] = "$Name";

You could even find the field name using mysql_field_name() instead of 'Name' ...

Then just do an asort($Listing[budget]) and boom, it's done. Remember to use asort instead of just sort to maintain indexes...

Hope this helps,
Tom

jmarco

Trying the method that WeedPacket pointed out to me I'm still getting unfavorable results... more help please!

I changed the array structure to: $location[$i][$assoc]

$listing[$i] = array(
        'school' => $school[$i],
        'city' => $city[$i],
        'state' => $state[$i],
        'students' => $students[$i],
        'contacts' => $contacts[$i],
        'budget' => $budget[$i],
        'school_year' => $school_year[$i],
        'id' => $id[$i])

Then I wrote this function:

function natorder($key, $a, $b) {
   return strnatcmp ( $a[$key], $b[$key] );
}

Then called

uasort($listing, natorder($order_by));

Where $order_by is the name of an associative $key.

After calling print_r($listing) It gets sorted, but it's weird...

I expected it reordered this way:

Array(
  [0][school] => str
  [0][students] => int
  ...
  [1][school] => str
  [1][students] => int
  ...
  [2][school] => str
  [2][students] => int
  ...)

But I get instead (when sorted by 'budget'):

Array ( 
  [2] => Array ( 
    [school] => Georgetown University
    [students] => 27500
    ...) 
  [1] => Array ( 
    [school] => University of Marconia
    [students] => 32000 
    ....) 
  [0] => Array ( 
    [school] => University of Legal Services 
    [students] => 28575 
    ....) 
)

From PHP.net it says that uasort will reorder the multidemnsional array so that "array indices maintain their correlation"... and that it does, but it's more than the correlation, it actually maintains the index as well, instead of reordering into the new "[0][],[1][],[2][]" structure it just switches around the indexes so that print_r will show "[2][],[0][],[1][]" or "[2][],[1][],[0][]"... or whatever it orders it into... that does me no good...

Furthermore it only seems to work when I explicitly name the key value in natorder($key, $a, $b)... because when I pass $key to the function as a variable it always orders it in the "[2][],[1][],[0][]" structure no matter what.

What am I doing wrong???

I looked at a couple of examples at PHP.net, uasort() , but I didn't really understand them and couldn't get them to work with my natorder() function... which I'm not even sure I'm using right?

😕