Sort an array of objects by one of the objects property with PHP • Fran Dieguez

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;
 
}