howto sort an array with objects by property value length?

Question

In javascript I have the following array with objects:

var defaultSanitizer = [
    {"word": "large", "replaceWith":"L"},
    {"word": "os", "replaceWith":"One Size"},  
    {"word": "xlarge", "replaceWith":"XL"},
    {"word": "o/s", "replaceWith":"One Size"},
    {"word": "medium", "replaceWith":"M"}
    ...
];

(in reality this array is much larger)

I want to make a function so I can order the array by the length of a property value eg the property "word" of the objects.

Something like this:

function sortArrByPropLengthAscending(arr, property) {

    var sortedArr = [];

    //some code

    return sortedArr;

}

If I were to run the function sortArrByPropLengthAscending(defaultSanitizer, "word") it should return me a sorted array that looks like this:

sortedArr = [        
    {"word": "os", "replaceWith":"One Size"},  
    {"word": "o/s", "replaceWith":"One Size"},
    {"word": "large", "replaceWith":"L"},
    {"word": "xlarge", "replaceWith":"XL"},        
    {"word": "medium", "replaceWith":"M"}
    ...
]  

How would you do this?

Answer 1

function sortMultiDimensional(a,b)
{
    return ((a.word.length < b.word.length) ? -1 : ((a.word.length > b.word.length) ? 1 : 0));
}

var defaultSanitizer = [
    {"word": "large", "replaceWith":"L"},
    {"word": "os", "replaceWith":"One Size"},  
    {"word": "xlarge", "replaceWith":"XL"},
    {"word": "o/s", "replaceWith":"One Size"},
    {"word": "medium", "replaceWith":"M"}
];

defaultSanitizer.sort(sortMultiDimensional);
console.log(defaultSanitizer);

Answer 2

You can sort the array in place by the ascending length of property propName with:

function sortArray(array, propName) {
    array.sort(function(a, b) {
        return a[propName].length - b[propName].length;
    });
}

See the description of the Array.sort function.