PHP - sort an array based on another array?

Is it possible in PHP to do something like this? How would you go about writing a function? Here is an example. The order is the most important thing.

$customer['address'] = '123 fake st';
$customer['name'] = 'Tim';
$customer['dob'] = '12/08/1986';
$customer['dontSortMe'] = 'this value doesnt need to be sorted';

And I'd like to do something like

$properOrderedArray = sortArrayByArray($customer, array('name', 'dob', 'address'));

Because at the end I use a foreach() and they're not in the right order (because I append the values to a string which needs to be in the correct order and I don't know in advance all of the array keys/values).

I've looked through PHP's internal array functions but it seems you can only sort alphabetically or numerically. Would I have to implement some sort of sorting function with array_walk?

Thank you in advance!

From stackoverflow

• There you go:

  function sortArrayByArray($array,$orderArray) {
      $ordered = array();
      foreach($orderArray as $key) {
       if(array_key_exists($key,$array)) {
        $ordered[$key] = $array[$key];
        unset($array[$key]);
       }
      }
      return $ordered + $array;
  }
  

  alex : Thank you very much!

  Eran Galperin : You're very welcome :)

  alex : So you can join 2 arrays with a + sign? I never knew that, I've been using `array_merge()`!

  grantwparks : Is this better than using `usort()` or `uasort()`?

  Neil Aitken : Excellent function, Thanks Eran.

• function sortArrayByArray(array $toSort, array $sortByValuesAsKeys)
  {
      $commonKeysInOrder = array_intersect_key(array_flip($sortByValuesAsKeys), $toSort);
      $commonKeysWithValue = array_intersect_key($toSort, $commonKeysInOrder);
      $sorted = array_merge($commonKeysInOrder, $commonKeysWithValue);
      return $sorted;
  }
  

  alex : I didn't know you could cast function arguments like that in PHP!

  OIS : Arrays and classes only.

• IF you have array in your array, you'll have to adapt the function by Eran a little bit...

  function sortArrayByArray($array,$orderArray) {
      $ordered = array();
      foreach($orderArray as $key => $value) {
          if(array_key_exists($key,$array)) {
                  $ordered[$key] = $array[$key];
                  unset($array[$key]);
          }
      }
      return $ordered + $array;
  }