How do I sort an NSMutableArray with custom object

Question

What I want to do seems pretty simple, but I can't find any answers on the web. I have an NSMutableArray of objects, and let's say they are 'Person' objects. I want to sort the NSMutableArray by Person.birthDate which is an NSDate.

I think it has something to do with this method:

NSArray *sortedArray = [drinkDetails sortedArrayUsingSelector:@selector(???)];

In Java I would make my object implement Comparable, or use Collections.sort with an inline custom comparator...how on earth do you do this in Objective-C?

Answer 1

You use NSSortDescriptor to sort an NSMutableArray with custom objects

 NSSortDescriptor *sortingDescriptor;
 sortingDescriptor = [[NSSortDescriptor alloc] initWithKey:@"birthDate"
                                       ascending:YES];
 NSArray *sortArray = [drinkDetails sortedArrayUsingDescriptors:@[sortDescriptor]];