sort by numbers?

[dreams4000]

Hi all,

Is there anyway in php or mysql to sort numbers correctly from a database pull? what I mean is this.. right now I have some info in a database that will be like:

1.0 Dogs
2.0 Cats
.
.
.
9.0 Whatever

When the data is 10.0 it puts it back up under the 1.0.. I would like the data I am displaying in php to format so that it is normal counting 1 - 10 without 10 being under the 1 or 20 under the 2.. any ideas? thanks!

[devinemke]

PHP has the [man]natsort[/man] function. not sure if there is a similar animal in mySQL.

[drawmack]

Those should be in seperate fields, 1 for the name and 1 for the number then you could easily just order by the number field and boom it'd be done.

[dreams4000]

Well all of the fields have IDs associated, so if i wanted to do that, then i could order by those. But they may not always be in the correct ID order. These are section numbers that I am trying to order by, they need to be with the name, but they will always be before the word itself. 1.0 Cats, 1.1 Cats with long tails, 2.0 dogs, etc.. Is there no way to do this?

[drawmack]

Right so in the db have two fields section_number (float) and section_name (varchar). Then do the order by like this order by section_number,section_name.

[dreams4000]

That would be fine if the entry is always with a number in front of it. This is a subject or name field much like posting a message here on the forum. Sometimes it has version numbers, sometimes simply names. I would prefer not to have a seperate field for numbers if it was possible. If there seems to be no way other than that, then Ill work something else out. Thanks for the help🙂

[drawmack]

well you could zero pad the numbers (i.e. 1.0 becomes 01.0 or 001.0 depending on the max digits in the number). Then order by will work and you can kill the extra zeroes befor printing with ereg_replace