How to sort an array of hashes in ruby

I have an array, each of whose elements is a hash with three key/value pairs:

:phone => "2130001111", :zip => "12345", :city => "sometown"

I'd like to sort the data by zip so all the phones in the same area are together. Does Ruby have an easy way to do that? Can will_paginate paginate data in an array?

Solution 1:

Simples:

array_of_hashes.sort_by { |hsh| hsh[:zip] }

Note:

When using sort_by you need to assign the result to a new variable: array_of_hashes = array_of_hashes.sort_by{} otherwise you can use the "bang" method to modify in place: array_of_hashes.sort_by!{}

Solution 2:

sorted = dataarray.sort {|a,b| a[:zip] <=> b[:zip]}

Solution 3:

Use the bang to modify in place the array:

array_of_hashes.sort_by!(&:zip)

Or re-assign it:

array_of_hashes = array_of_hashes.sort_by(&:zip)

Note that sort_by method will sort by ascending order.

If you need to sort with descending order you could do something like this:

array_of_hashes.sort_by!(&:zip).reverse!

or

array_of_hashes = array_of_hashes.sort_by(&:zip).reverse