I have a list of objects I wish to sort based on a field attr of type string. I tried using -
list.sort(function (a, b) {
return a.attr - b.attr
})
but found that - doesn't appear to work with strings in JavaScript. How can I sort a list of objects based on an attribute with type string?
Use String.prototype.localeCompare as per your example:
list.sort(function (a, b) {
return ('' + a.attr).localeCompare(b.attr);
})
We force a.attr to be a string to avoid exceptions. localeCompare has been supported since Internet Explorer 6 and Firefox 1. You may also see the following code used that doesn't respect a locale:
if (item1.attr < item2.attr)
return -1;
if ( item1.attr > item2.attr)
return 1;
return 0;
localeCompare() doesn't run into this problem but doesn't understand numerics so you'll get [ "1", "10", "2" ] as with sorting comparisons in most languages. if you want sorting for your UI front end, look into the alphanum/natural sort algorithm #4340727 or #4322329 –
Meaghanmeagher localeCompare() is only supported in modern browsers: IE11+ at the time of writing, see developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/… –
Dative Natural Sort Algorithm .... see #2802841 –
Dative localeCompare() going back many versions, but does not support specifying the locale until version 11. Note also the questions that Dead.Rabit linked to. –
Cellobiose localeCompare() behaves with different locales spesified. https://mcmap.net/q/36707/-a-stable-neutral-culture-insensitive-locale-in-javascript –
Gustavogustavus undefined.toString() is a runtime error, while ''+undefined evaluates to 'undefined', @TheCuBeMan. In this specific case, it means if your list contains an item that doesn't have an attr property the sort logic will still function. However, this may mask a more serious error (e.g., you forgot to initialize an object, or mistyped a property name). In general, I prefer to avoid errors in generic bits of functionality like this and leave them to be discovered in places where it's more obvious what went wrong. Credit goes to @robocat who introduced this idiom in their edit! –
Cellobiose I was really annoyed about this string natural sorting order so I took quite some time to investigate this issue.
localeCompare() character support is badass; just use it.
As pointed out by Shog9, the answer to your question is:
return item1.attr.localeCompare(item2.attr);
There are quite a bunch of custom implementations out there, trying to do string comparison more precisely called "natural string sort order"
When "playing" with these implementations, I always noticed some strange "natural sorting order" choice, or rather mistakes (or omissions in the best cases).
Typically, special characters (space, dash, ampersand, brackets, and so on) are not processed correctly.
You will then find them appearing mixed up in different places, typically that could be:
When one would have expected special characters to all be "grouped" together in one place, except for the space special character maybe (which would always be the first character). That is, either all before numbers, or all between numbers and letters (lowercase & uppercase being "together" one after another), or all after letters.
My conclusion is that they all fail to provide a consistent order when I start adding barely unusual characters (i.e., characters with diacritics or characters such as dash, exclamation mark and so on).
Research on the custom implementations:
localeCompare()localeCompare() oldest implementation (without the locales and options arguments) is supported by Internet Explorer 6 and later, see Legacy Microsoft Edge developer documentation (scroll down to the localeCompare() method).
The built-in localeCompare() method does a much better job at sorting, even international and special characters.
The only problem using the localeCompare() method is that "the locale and sort order used are entirely implementation dependent". In other words, when using localeCompare such as stringOne.localeCompare(stringTwo): Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Internet Explorer have a different sort order for Strings.
Research on the browser-native implementations:
Implementing a solid algorithm (meaning: consistent but also covering a wide range of characters) is a very tough task. UTF-8 contains more than 2000 characters and covers more than 120 scripts (languages).
Finally, there are some specification for this tasks, it is called the "Unicode Collation Algorithm". You can find more information about this on this question I posted, Is there a language-agnostic specification for "string natural sorting order"?
So considering the current level of support provided by the JavaScript custom implementations I came across, we will probably never see anything getting any close to supporting all these characters and scripts (languages). Hence I would rather use the browsers' native localeCompare() method. Yes, it does have the downside of being non-consistent across browsers, but basic testing shows it covers a much wider range of characters, allowing solid and meaningful sort orders.
So as pointed out by Shog9, the answer to your question is:
return item1.attr.localeCompare(item2.attr);
Thanks to Shog9's nice answer, which put me in the "right" direction I believe.
list.sort((a, b) => (a.attr > b.attr) - (a.attr < b.attr))
Or
list.sort((a, b) => +(a.attr > b.attr) || -(a.attr < b.attr))
Casting a boolean value to a number yields the following:
true -> 1false -> 0Consider three possible patterns:
(x > y) - (y < x) -> 1 - 0 -> 1(x > y) - (y < x) -> 0 - 0 -> 0(x > y) - (y < x) -> 0 - 1 -> -1(Alternative)
+(x > y) || -(x < y) -> 1 || 0 -> 1+(x > y) || -(x < y) -> 0 || 0 -> 0+(x > y) || -(x < y) -> 0 || -1 -> -1So these logics are equivalent to typical sort comparator functions.
if (x == y) {
return 0;
}
return x > y ? 1 : -1;
localeCompare and standard comparison yield different results. Which do you expect? ["A", "b", "C", "d"].sort((a, b) => a.localeCompare(b)) sorts in case-insensitive alphabetic order while ["A", "b", "C", "d"].sort((a, b) => (a > b) - (a < b)) does in codepoint order –
Countermove Since strings can be compared directly in JavaScript, this will do the job:
list.sort(function (a, b) {
return a.attr < b.attr ? -1: 1;
})
This is a little bit more efficient than using
return a.attr > b.attr ? 1: -1;
because in case of elements with same attr (a.attr == b.attr), the sort function will swap the two for no reason.
For example
var so1 = function (a, b) { return a.atr > b.atr ? 1: -1; };
var so2 = function (a, b) { return a.atr < b.atr ? -1: 1; }; // Better
var m1 = [ { atr: 40, s: "FIRST" }, { atr: 100, s: "LAST" }, { atr: 40, s: "SECOND" } ].sort (so1);
var m2 = [ { atr: 40, s: "FIRST" }, { atr: 100, s: "LAST" }, { atr: 40, s: "SECOND" } ].sort (so2);
// m1 sorted but ...: 40 SECOND 40 FIRST 100 LAST
// m2 more efficient: 40 FIRST 40 SECOND 100 LAST
You should use > or < and == here. So the solution would be:
list.sort(function(item1, item2) {
var val1 = item1.attr,
val2 = item2.attr;
if (val1 == val2) return 0;
if (val1 > val2) return 1;
if (val1 < val2) return -1;
});
Nested ternary arrow function
(a,b) => (a < b ? -1 : a > b ? 1 : 0)
A TypeScript sorting method modifier using a custom function to return a sorted string in either ascending or descending order:
const data = ["jane", "mike", "salome", "ababus", "buisa", "dennis"];
const sortStringArray = (stringArray: string[], mode?: 'desc' | 'asc') => {
if (!mode || mode === 'asc') {
return stringArray.sort((a, b) => a.localeCompare(b))
}
return stringArray.sort((a, b) => b.localeCompare(a))
}
console.log(sortStringArray(data, 'desc'));// [ 'salome', 'mike', 'jane', 'dennis', 'buisa', 'ababus' ]
console.log(sortStringArray(data, 'asc')); // [ 'ababus', 'buisa', 'dennis', 'jane', 'mike', 'salome' ]
An explanation of why the approach in the question doesn't work:
let products = [
{ name: "laptop", price: 800 },
{ name: "phone", price:200},
{ name: "tv", price: 1200}
];
products.sort( (a, b) => {
{let value= a.name - b.name; console.log(value); return value}
});
> 2 NaN
Subtraction between strings returns NaN.
Echoing Alejadro's answer, the right approach is:
products.sort( (a,b) => a.name > b.name ? 1 : -1 )
I had been bothered about this for long, so I finally researched this and give you this long winded reason for why things are the way they are.
From the spec:
Section 11.9.4 The Strict Equals Operator ( === )
The production EqualityExpression : EqualityExpression === RelationalExpression
is evaluated as follows:
- Let lref be the result of evaluating EqualityExpression.
- Let lval be GetValue(lref).
- Let rref be the result of evaluating RelationalExpression.
- Let rval be GetValue(rref).
- Return the result of performing the strict equality comparison
rval === lval. (See 11.9.6)
So now we go to 11.9.6
11.9.6 The Strict Equality Comparison Algorithm
The comparison x === y, where x and y are values, produces true or false.
Such a comparison is performed as follows:
- If Type(x) is different from Type(y), return false.
- If Type(x) is Undefined, return true.
- If Type(x) is Null, return true.
- If Type(x) is Number, then
...
- If Type(x) is String, then return true if x and y are exactly the
same sequence of characters (same length and same characters in
corresponding positions); otherwise, return false.
That's it. The triple equals operator applied to strings returns true iff the arguments are exactly the same strings (same length and same characters in corresponding positions).
So === will work in the cases when we're trying to compare strings which might have arrived from different sources, but which we know will eventually have the same values - a common enough scenario for inline strings in our code. For example, if we have a variable named connection_state, and we wish to know which one of the following states ['connecting', 'connected', 'disconnecting', 'disconnected'] is it in right now, we can directly use the ===.
But there's more. Just above 11.9.4, there is a short note:
NOTE 4
Comparison of Strings uses a simple equality test on sequences of code
unit values. There is no attempt to use the more complex, semantically oriented
definitions of character or string equality and collating order defined in the
Unicode specification. Therefore Strings values that are canonically equal
according to the Unicode standard could test as unequal. In effect this
algorithm assumes that both Strings are already in normalized form.
Hmm. What now? Externally obtained strings can, and most likely will, be weird unicodey, and our gentle === won't do them justice. In comes localeCompare to the rescue:
15.5.4.9 String.prototype.localeCompare (that)
...
The actual return values are implementation-defined to permit implementers
to encode additional information in the value, but the function is required
to define a total ordering on all Strings and to return 0 when comparing
Strings that are considered canonically equivalent by the Unicode standard.
We can go home now.
tl;dr;
To compare strings in javascript, use localeCompare; if you know that the strings have no non-ASCII components because they are, for example, internal program constants, then === also works.
If you want to control locales (or case or accent), then use Intl.collator:
const collator = new Intl.Collator();
list.sort((a, b) => collator.compare(a.attr, b.attr));
You can construct a collator like:
new Intl.Collator("en");
new Intl.Collator("en", {sensitivity: "case"});
...
See the above link for documentation.
Note: unlike some other solutions, it handles null, undefined the JavaScript way, i.e., moves them to the end.
There should be ascending and descending orders functions
if (order === 'asc') {
return a.localeCompare(b);
}
return b.localeCompare(a);
Use sort() straightforward without any - or <
const areas = ['hill', 'beach', 'desert', 'mountain']
console.log(areas.sort())
// To print in descending way
console.log(areas.sort().reverse())In your operation in your initial question, you are performing the following operation:
item1.attr - item2.attr
So, assuming those are numbers (i.e. item1.attr = "1", item2.attr = "2") You still may use the "===" operator (or other strict evaluators) provided that you ensure type. The following should work:
return parseInt(item1.attr) - parseInt(item2.attr);
If they are alphaNumeric, then do use localCompare().
list.sort(function(item1, item2){
return +(item1.attr > item2.attr) || +(item1.attr === item2.attr) - 1;
})
How they work samples:
+('aaa'>'bbb')||+('aaa'==='bbb')-1
+(false)||+(false)-1
0||0-1
-1
+('bbb'>'aaa')||+('bbb'==='aaa')-1
+(true)||+(false)-1
1||0-1
1
+('aaa'>'aaa')||+('aaa'==='aaa')-1
+(false)||+(true)-1
0||1-1
0
<!doctype html>
<html>
<body>
<p id = "myString">zyxtspqnmdba</p>
<p id = "orderedString"></p>
<script>
var myString = document.getElementById("myString").innerHTML;
orderString(myString);
function orderString(str) {
var i = 0;
var myArray = str.split("");
while (i < str.length){
var j = i + 1;
while (j < str.length) {
if (myArray[j] < myArray[i]){
var temp = myArray[i];
myArray[i] = myArray[j];
myArray[j] = temp;
}
j++;
}
i++;
}
var newString = myArray.join("");
document.getElementById("orderedString").innerHTML = newString;
}
</script>
</body>
</html>
var str = ['v','a','da','c','k','l']
var b = str.join('').split('').sort().reverse().join('')
console.log(b)
da separated if you try splitting the result –
Perpend © 2022 - 2024 — McMap. All rights reserved.
JavaScript case insensitive string comparisonon #2141127 – DativeJavascript : remove accents/diacritics in stringson #991404 – Dative