If you want to sort an array of objects but using one of its object properties you can do it with usort, but this could take a lot of time and will be very computational expensive. So I have implemented one method you can insert into one of your PHP classes. This method implements the quicksort algorithm. As a result I have experienced a huge performance improvement against usort: one array of objects with 10.000 elements sorted with usort takes ~3.4 sg, and with quicksort algorithm takes, in my samples, ~0.56 sg. Awesome isn’t it? Just take the code:
/**
* Sort one array of objects by one of the object's property
*
* @param mixed $array, the array of objects
* @param mixed $property, the property to sort with
* @return mixed, the sorted $array
**/
static public function sortArrayofObjectByProperty( $array, $property )
{
$cur = 1;
$stack[1]['l'] = 0;
$stack[1]['r'] = count($array)-1;
do
{
$l = $stack[$cur]['l'];
$r = $stack[$cur]['r'];
$cur--;
do
{
$i = $l;
$j = $r;
$tmp = $array[(int)( ($l+$r)/2 )];
// split the array in to parts
// first: objects with "smaller" property $property
// second: objects with "bigger" property $property
do
{
while( $array[$i]->{$property} < $tmp->{$property} ) $i++;
while( $tmp->{$property} < $array[$j]->{$property} ) $j--;
// Swap elements of two parts if necesary
if( $i <= $j)
{
$w = $array[$i];
$array[$i] = $array[$j];
$array[$j] = $w;
$i++;
$j--;
}
} while ( $i <= $j );
if( $i < $r ) {
$cur++;
$stack[$cur]['l'] = $i;
$stack[$cur]['r'] = $r;
}
$r = $j;
} while ( $l < $r );
} while ( $cur != 0 );
return $array;
}