FAQ
overflow

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, 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

Compare method

Either you implement a compare-method for your object:

- (NSComparisonResult)compare:(Person *)otherObject {
    return [self.birthDate compare:otherObject.birthDate];
}

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

NSSortDescriptor (better)

or usually even better: (The default sorting selector of NSSortDescriptor is compare:)

NSSortDescriptor *sortDescriptor;
sortDescriptor = [[[NSSortDescriptor alloc] initWithKey:@"birthDate"
                                              ascending:YES] autorelease];
NSArray *sortDescriptors = [NSArray arrayWithObject:sortDescriptor];
NSArray *sortedArray;
sortedArray = [drinkDetails sortedArrayUsingDescriptors:sortDescriptors];

Blocks (shiny!)

There's also the possibility of sorting with a block since 10.6:

NSArray *sortedArray;
sortedArray = [drinkDetails sortedArrayUsingComparator:^NSComparisonResult(id a, id b) {
    NSDate *first = [(Person*)a birthDate];
    NSDate *second = [(Person*)b birthDate];
    return [first compare:second];
}];

Tweet