I'm looking to group and order items by similar similar object properties by a set of cascading rules, but I'm not sure how to go about doing it.
Let's say I have an array of objects that looks like this:
Array
(
[0] => stdClass Object
(
[name] => New Name (phase 1)
)
[1] => stdClass Object
(
[name] => Test (original)
)
[2] => stdClass Object
(
[name] => Test (phase 3)
)
[3] => stdClass Object
(
[name] => Another Name (phase 1)
)
[4] => stdClass Object
(
[name] => Another Name (original)
)
[5] => stdClass Object
(
[name] => Test (phase 2)
)
[6] => stdClass Object
(
[name] => New Name
)
)
I want to be able to define rules to group and order them by, with the groups setup as a property of the main parent. The rules would be as follows:
If an object with a name that has no parentheses exists, it should be the parent. If that does not exist, an object with (original) in the name should be the parent. If that doesn't exist, an object with (phase 1) should be the parent, and so on. The ruleset for sorting names would be like so:
No parentheses, (original), (phase 1), (phase 2), (phase 3)
Ideally, I would like to end up with this object:
Array
(
[0] => stdClass Object
(
[name] => New Name
[children] => Array (
[0] => stdClass Object
(
[name] => New Name (phase 1)
)
)
)
[1] => stdClass Object
(
[name] => Test (original)
[children] => Array (
[0] => stdClass Object
(
[name] => Test (phase 2)
)
[1] => stdClass Object
(
[name] => Test (phase 3)
)
)
)
[2] => stdClass Object
(
[name] => Another Name (original)
[children] => Array (
[0] => stdClass Object
(
[name] => Another Name (phase 1)
)
)
)
)
