Sort array by firstname (alphabetically) in Javascript
Shortest possible code with ES6!
users.sort((a, b) => a.firstname.localeCompare(b.firstname))
String.prototype.localeCompare() basic support is universal!
Suppose you have an array users
. You may use users.sort
and pass a function that takes two arguments and compare them (comparator)
It should return
- something negative if first argument is less than second (should be placed before the second in resulting array)
- something positive if first argument is greater (should be placed after second one)
- 0 if those two elements are equal.
In our case if two elements are a
and b
we want to compare a.firstname
and b.firstname
Example:
users.sort(function(a, b){
if(a.firstname < b.firstname) { return -1; }
if(a.firstname > b.firstname) { return 1; }
return 0;
})
This code is going to work with any type.
Note that in "real life"™ you often want to ignore case, correctly sort diacritics, weird symbols like ß, etc. when you compare strings, so you may want to use localeCompare
. See other answers for clarity.
Something like this:
array.sort(function(a, b){
var nameA = a.name.toLowerCase(), nameB = b.name.toLowerCase();
if (nameA < nameB) //sort string ascending
return -1;
if (nameA > nameB)
return 1;
return 0; //default return value (no sorting)
});