Sorting Alphanumeric Data in PHP

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| By Webner

While fetching data from database, in SQL query I had ‘order by’ clause but the results were not sorted when the data was in alphanumeric form. The reason for this is that SQL sorts character by character from left to right. So it places c10 before c2 as 1<2.

For Example:

$query="select id,shortname from {abc} where rollno=".$id." GROUP BY shortname ORDER BY shortname ASC";

$query= $DB->get_records_sql($query);

foreach($query as $a)
{
array_push ($names,$a->shortname);   
}
echo"<pre>";print_r($names);echo"<pre>";

Output:

   [0] => c1
   [1] => c10
   [2] => c2
   [3] => c3
   [4] => c4
   [5] => c5
   [6] => c6
   [7] => c7
   [8] => c8
   [9] => c9

Solution: natcasesort($names)

natcasesort() uses natural sorting algorithm in the way human being sorts data.

Output:

   [0] => c1
   [2] => c2
   [3] => c3
   [4] => c4
   [5] => c5
   [6] => c6
   [7] => c7
   [8] => c8
   [9] => c9
   [1] => c10

Note: Index of array after sorting gets unsorted when we use natcasesort().

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