README

This package, formerly known as Comparator Tools, provides sorting of objects that have a Comparable interface and other useful functions with comparison of objects. With these tools the Comparable and Comparator interfaces can be used as known from Java.

Requirements

The package requires PHP 5.4 or later. The 2.x branch requires PHP 5.6 or later.

Install

Via Composer

$ composer require sgh/comparable

Usage

To give your classes the comparable functionality, implement the Comparable interface:

use SGH\Comparable\Comparable;

class Foo implements Comparable
{
    public function compareTo($object)
    {
        // if $this less than $object,    return -1
        // if $this equals $object,       return 0
        // if $this greater than $object, return 1
    }
}

The compareTo method will be called with another instance of Foo as parameter and must return a negative integer value if ($this < $object) applies and a positive integer value if ($this > $object) applies, 0 otherwise (the objects are considered equal). Note that non-integer values will be cast to (int), so that 0.5 will be treated as 0.

To sort or compare objects with the Comparable interface, you can use the methods in SortFunctions and SetFunctions.

Sorting

use SGH\Comparable\SortFunctions;

SortFunctions::sort($arrayOfFoo);
SortFunctions::asort($arrayOfFoo);
SortFunctions::rsort($arrayOfFoo);
SortFunctions::arsort($arrayOfFoo);
SortFunctions::multisort($arrayOfFoo, $arbitraryArray, ...);

The first four methods work analogous to the respective core functions sort, asort, rsort and arsort. multisort works like array_multisort in the "sort multiple arrays" mode, i.e. the first passed array is sorted with the Comparable interface, the others are re-ordered in the same way as the first.

Comparing

use SGH\Comparable\SetFunctions;

$diff = SetFunctions::diff($arrayOfFoo1, $arrayOfFoo2, ...);
$diff = SetFunctions::diff_assoc($arrayOfFoo1, $arrayOfFoo2, ...);
$intersect = SetFunctions::intersect($arrayOfFoo1, $arrayOfFoo2, ...);
$intersect = SetFunctions::intersect_assoc($arrayOfFoo1, $arrayOfFoo2, ...);
$unique = SetFunctions::unique($arrayOfFoo);

The methods work analogous to the respective core functions array_diff, array_diff_assoc, array_intersect, array_intersect_assoc and array_unique. They treat objects $a and $b as equal if and only if $a->compareTo($b) == 0.

Comparators

It is also possible to implement the comparison in comparator classes to keep it separated from the objects to compare. This way comparison can be implemented for any values:

use SGH\Comparable\Comparator;

class FooComparator implements Comparator
{
    public function compare($object1, $object2)
    {
        // if $object1 less than $object2,    return -1
        // if $object1 equals $object2,       return 0
        // if $object1 greater than $object2, return 1
    }
}

The compare method is defined just like the compareTo method but both objects are passed as parameters.

To use a comparator, pass it as last argument to any method of SetFunctions and SortFunctions:

use SGH\Comparable\SortFunctions;
use SGH\Comparable\SetFunctions;

SortFunctions::sort($arrayOfFoo, new FooComparator);
SortFunctions::asort($arrayOfFoo, new FooComparator);
SortFunctions::rsort($arrayOfFoo, new FooComparator);
SortFunctions::arsort($arrayOfFoo, new FooComparator);
SortFunctions::multisort($arrayOfFoo, $arbitraryArray, ..., new FooComparator);

$diff = SetFunctions::diff($arrayOfFoo1, $arrayOfFoo2, ..., new FooComparator);
$diff = SetFunctions::diff_assoc($arrayOfFoo1, $arrayOfFoo2, ..., new FooComparator);
$intersect = SetFunctions::intersect($arrayOfFoo1, $arrayOfFoo2, ..., new FooComparator);
$intersect = SetFunctions::intersect_assoc($arrayOfFoo1, $arrayOfFoo2, ..., new FooComparator);
$unique = SetFunctions::unique($arrayOfFoo, new FooComparator);

The ObjectComparator

The package comes with an ObjectComparator that compares equality of objects (i.e. if two variables contain the same instance). It provides no useful sort order but can be used with the methods in SetFunctions (the core functions array_diff etc. cannot compare objects, they try to cast them to string for comparison).

use SGH\Comparable\SetFunctions;
use SGH\Comparable\Comparator\ObjectComparator;

$diff = SetFunctions::diff($arrayOfObjects1, $arrayOfObjects2, new ObjectComparator);
// .. and so on

The following shortcut methods exist:

SetFunctions::objectsDiff($arrayOfObjects1, $arrayOfObjects2);
SetFunctions::objectsIntersect($arrayOfObjects1, $arrayOfObjects2);
SetFunctions::objectsUnique($arrayOfObjects);

SortedIterator

You can sort iterators as well. Due to the nature of iterators, this means essentially that they get iterated over once, and you get an ArrayIterator with all resulting items, sorted. To sort an iterator, decorate it with the SortedIterator like this:

use SGH\Comparable\SortFunctions;

$sortedIterator = SortFunctions::sortedIterator($iterator);

Exceptions

The default comparator throws a ComparatorException if one of the objects does not implement the Comparable interface.

You are encouraged to throw a ComparatorException in your compare() or compareTo() implementations if the objects are not comparable to each other. In most cases you should do it if the objects are not of expected type.

Testing

$ phpunit

Contributing

Please see CONTRIBUTING for details.

Security

If you discover any security related issues, please email fschmengler@sgh-it.eu instead of using the issue tracker.

Credits

Fabian Schmengler(https://github.com/schmengler)
All Contributors

License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.

sgh / comparable

Maintainers

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