How to sort an associative array by its values in

Question

I have the associative array:

array["sub2"] = 1;
array["sub0"] = -1;
array["sub1"] = 0;
array["sub3"] = 1;
array["sub4"] = 0;

What is the most elegant way to sort (descending) by its values where the result would be an array with the respective indices in this order:

sub2, sub3, sub1, sub4, sub0?

Answer 1

Instead of correcting you on the semantics of an 'associative array', I think this is what you want:

function getSortedKeys(obj) {
    var keys = []; for(var key in obj) keys.push(key);
    return keys.sort(function(a,b){return obj[b]-obj[a]});
}

You dump in an object (like yours) and get an array of the keys - eh properties - back, sorted descending by the (numerical) value of the, eh, values of the, eh, object.

This only works if your values are numerical. Tweek the little function(a,b) in there to change the sorting mechanism to work ascending, or work for string values (for example). Left as an exercise for the reader.

EDIT: people keep upvoting this answer, but it's really old. Please reconsider why you're not just using Object.keys() nowadays: var keys = Object.keys(obj);

Answer 2

Just so it's out there and someone is looking for tuple based sorts. This will compare the first element of the object in array, than the second element and so on. i.e in the example below, it will compare first by "a", then by "b" and so on.

let arr = [
    {a:1, b:2, c:3},
    {a:3, b:5, c:1},
    {a:2, b:3, c:9},
    {a:2, b:5, c:9},
    {a:2, b:3, c:10}    
]

function getSortedScore(obj) {
    var keys = []; 
    for(var key in obj[0]) keys.push(key);
    return obj.sort(function(a,b){
        for (var i in keys) {
            let k = keys[i];
            if (a[k]-b[k] > 0) return -1;
            else if (a[k]-b[k] < 0) return 1;
            else continue;
        };
    });
}

console.log(getSortedScore(arr))

OUPUTS

 [ { a: 3, b: 5, c: 1 },
  { a: 2, b: 5, c: 9 },
  { a: 2, b: 3, c: 10 },
  { a: 2, b: 3, c: 9 },
  { a: 1, b: 2, c: 3 } ]

Answer 3

No unnecessary complication required...

function sortMapByValue(map)
{
    var tupleArray = [];
    for (var key in map) tupleArray.push([key, map[key]]);
    tupleArray.sort(function (a, b) { return a[1] - b[1] });
    return tupleArray;
}

Answer 4

Continued discussion & other solutions covered at How to sort an (associative) array by value? with the best solution (for my case) being by saml (quoted below).

Arrays can only have numeric indexes. You'd need to rewrite this as either an Object, or an Array of Objects.

var status = new Array();
status.push({name: 'BOB', val: 10});
status.push({name: 'TOM', val: 3});
status.push({name: 'ROB', val: 22});
status.push({name: 'JON', val: 7});

If you like the status.push method, you can sort it with:

status.sort(function(a,b) {
    return a.val - b.val;
});

Answer 5

@commonpike's answer is "the right one", but as he goes on to comment...

most browsers nowadays just support Object.keys()

Yeah.. Object.keys() is WAY better.

But what's even better? Duh, it's it in coffeescript!

sortedKeys = (x) -> Object.keys(x).sort (a,b) -> x[a] - x[b]

sortedKeys
  'a' :  1
  'b' :  3
  'c' :  4
  'd' : -1

[ 'd', 'a', 'b', 'c' ]

Answer 6

Javascript doesn't have "associative arrays" the way you're thinking of them. Instead, you simply have the ability to set object properties using array-like syntax (as in your example), plus the ability to iterate over an object's properties.

The upshot of this is that there is no guarantee as to the order in which you iterate over the properties, so there is nothing like a sort for them. Instead, you'll need to convert your object properties into a "true" array (which does guarantee order). Here's a code snippet for converting an object into an array of two-tuples (two-element arrays), sorting it as you describe, then iterating over it:

var tuples = [];

for (var key in obj) tuples.push([key, obj[key]]);

tuples.sort(function(a, b) {
    a = a[1];
    b = b[1];

    return a < b ? -1 : (a > b ? 1 : 0);
});

for (var i = 0; i < tuples.length; i++) {
    var key = tuples[i][0];
    var value = tuples[i][1];

    // do something with key and value
}

You may find it more natural to wrap this in a function which takes a callback:

function bySortedValue(obj, callback, context) {
  var tuples = [];

  for (var key in obj) tuples.push([key, obj[key]]);

  tuples.sort(function(a, b) {
    return a[1] < b[1] ? 1 : a[1] > b[1] ? -1 : 0
  });

  var length = tuples.length;
  while (length--) callback.call(context, tuples[length][0], tuples[length][1]);
}

bySortedValue({
  foo: 1,
  bar: 7,
  baz: 3
}, function(key, value) {
  document.getElementById('res').innerHTML += `${key}: ${value}<br>`
});

<p id='res'>Result:<br/><br/><p>