printing out an array alphabetically

Question

hi i have the following code from a template.

<ul class="sub-categories">
    <?php

        foreach ($category->getChildren() as $child) {
            if (!$child->totalItemCount()) continue;
            $link = $this->app->route->category($child);
            $item_count = ($this->params->get('template.show_sub_categories_item_count')) ? ' <span>('.$child->totalItemCount().')</span>' : '';
            echo '<li><a href="'.$link.'" title="'.$child->name.'">'.$child->name.'</a>'.$item_count.'</li>';
        }

    ?>
</ul>

I would like to sort the sub category items (which are cities subdivided by state further up in the code.

i thought i could just sort the following array $category->getChildren() but it doesnt work. so i did an echo on it and it said array, so i did var_dump on that array and got a bool(true) on it. when i tried other ways (print_r) of outputting it it crashed the page.

i dont understand arrays very well so could someone explain what is this array that is not an array? how can i sort the city list?

thanks!

Answer 1

I don't really understand what the problem was with trying to print the array, but I would think defining a custom sort with usort() like this would be what you're looking for:

<?php

function compareChildren ($a, $b) {
    return strcmp($a->name, $b->name);
}

$children = $category->getChildren();
usort($children, 'compareChildren');

foreach ($children as $child) {
    // ...
}

Here's a working example on codepad .