Sort an array of NSDictionary based on dates

Question

I'm looking for a way to sort an NSMutableArray of dictionaries based on dates contained in the dictionaries. Each one looks like this:

{
  name: tom, 
  surname: smith, 
  date of birth (NSDate): 2013-02-21 15:25:27
}

I know of the methods earlierDate etc., but since they only compare two dates I'm just a bit stuck on how to iterate through the array so that I come out with a fully ordered array of dictionaries?

Nope, need to sort by date not by ascending order on the key — Da49, Feb 25 '13 at 18:51
Did you read the spec for NSArray??????? There are several sort routines that can be adapted to do this. — Hot Licks, Feb 25 '13 at 19:10

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 25 '13 at 19:00

5

using sortUsingComparator this can be solved easily:

[yourArray sortUsingComparator:^NSComparisonResult(NSDictionary *a, NSDictionary *b) {
   return [a[@"dateOfBirth"] compare:b[@"dateOfBirth"]];
}];

answered Feb 25 '13 at 19:00

Jonathan Cichon

4,396
16
19

Why was this downvoted? This is a viable approach for an `NSMutableArray` of dictionaries where the dictionaries have a key of `@"dateOfBirth"`. – rmaddy Feb 25 '13 at 19:51

Sort an array of NSDictionary based on dates

1 Answers1