PHP foreach get table value and change - php

Question

Here is the situation, I am getting data from a WordPress plugin database. I need to grab that "products" from the database, find the "name" value, remove some charafters from it and then finally sort it by "name" length. Here is what is going on
//The plug in queries the database
$products = $product->getModelsNames($where="", $orderBy='order by name', $limit=null);
//I added this to take that query and make changes to the 'name' field
foreach ($products as $p) {
//Characters I need removed
$characters = array("a", "b", "c", "d", ".", "-");
$p->name = str_replace($characters, "", $p->name);
//Re sort by name now without characters and save back to $products. not sure what to do here
}
//now start the loop for the products
<?php foreach($products as $p): ?>
The main issue is I have products with names like: 8.2-1, 8.2-2, 8.2-2-A, 8.2-10 and so on and I can not get them to sort right. I figure the only way is to remove all the characters to just have the numbers and then sort by length or else I get my products listed like 8.2-1, 8.2-10, 8.2-2, 8.2-2-A or 8.2-1, 8.2-2, 8.2-10, 8.2-2-A. On top of that I need to echo the names in the second loop as they were before I removed the characters. At a real loss on how to get this done. Seemed simple enough since products often go by number and character but can not get them sorted right.

Answer 1

What you are looking for is called natural ordering. PHP has a function for this:
$products = array(
'8.2-10',
'8.2-2',
'8.2-1',
'8.2-2-A'
);
natsort($products);
foreach ($products as $product) {
echo $product . "<BR>";
}
Output:
8.2-1
8.2-2
8.2-2-A
8.2-10
EDIT! missed the fact that $products was actually an array of objects. You can use a different technique using strnatcmp:
usort($products, function($a, $b) {
return strnatcmp($a->name, $b->name);
});
Note that if you wanted to keep the same keys for some reason, just change it to uasort instead.