Group array results in Alphabetic order PHP - php

Question

I'm using below code to display Image & Name of webisites form database.
<fieldset>
<h1>A</h1>
<ul>
<?php foreach ($records as $key) { ?>
<li class="siteli"> <a href="#" class="add">
<div id="site-icon"><img src="<?php echo $key->site_img; ?>" width="16" height=""></div>
<p id="text-site"> <?php echo $key->site_name; ?></p>
</li>
<?php } ?>
</ul>
</fieldset>
Now I'm trying to group this results alphabetically by adding A, B, C etc as title.
Example,
A
Amazon
Aol
Aol Mail
B
Bing
Bogger

Answer 1

You can use array sorting to sort the array. In your case I would choose sort()
Now to show the links with a preceding Letter I would use:
<?php
$records = ['Aaaaa', 'Aaaa2', 'bbb', 'bbb2', 'Dddd'];
$lastChar = '';
sort($records, SORT_STRING | SORT_FLAG_CASE); //the flags are needed. Without the `Ddd` will come before `bbb`.
//Available from version 5.4. If you have an earlier version (4+) you can try natcasesort()
foreach($records as $val) {
$char = $val[0]; //first char
if ($char !== $lastChar) {
if ($lastChar !== '')
echo '<br>';
echo strtoupper($char).'<br>'; //print A / B / C etc
$lastChar = $char;
}
echo $val.'<br>';
}
?>
This will output something like
A
Aaaa2
Aaaaa
B
bbb
bbb2
D
Dddd
Notice that the C is missing, because there are no words starting with C.

Answer 2

This is a modification of #Hugo Delsing's answer.
I needed to be able to group my brands together like this, but one bug in the code was the fact that if I had say iForce Nutrition and Inner Armour it would group these into two separate groups because of the letter case.
Changes I Made
Because it was fully alphabetical, it was only going by first letter I changes SORT_STRING to SORT_NATURAL
Changed: if ($char !== $lastChar) to if (strtolower($char) !== strtolower($lastChar))
<?php
$records = ['FinaFlex', 'iForce Nutrition', 'Inner Armour', 'Dymatize', 'Ultimate Nutrition'];
$lastChar = '';
sort($records, SORT_NATURAL | SORT_FLAG_CASE); //Allows for a full comparison and will alphabetize correctly.
foreach($records as $val) {
$char = $val[0]; //first char
if (strtolower($char) !== strtolower($lastChar)) {
if ($lastChar !== '')
echo '<br>';
echo strtoupper($char).'<br>'; //print A / B / C etc
$lastChar = $char;
}
echo $val.'<br>';
}
?>
The final output will be like this
D
Dymatize
F
FinaFlex
I
iForce Nutrition
Inner Armour
U
Ultimate Nutrition
I hope this helps everyone, and a big thank you to Hugo for providing the code that got me exactly where I needed to be.
You can see my example here https://hyperionsupps.com/brand-index

Answer 3

$records = ['FinaFlex', 'iForce Nutrition', 'Inner Armour', 'Dymatize', 'Ultimate Nutrition'];
$temp=array();
$first_char="";
for($i=0;$i<count($records);$i++)
{
$first_char= strtoupper ($records[$i][0]);
if(!in_array($first_char, $temp))
{
echo strtoupper($first_char).'<br>'; //print A / B / C etc
}
$temp[]= $first_char;
echo $records[$i]."<br>";
}