The problem boils down to sorting an array of objects by a timestamp property, so the information here is nothing that hasn't been done before. However, after spending some time looking for a way to use a filter in the Windows Azure SDK for PHP API, I didn't find one, so I'm hoping this post might save others some time. In the end, my solution simply uses the PHP array_multisort function.

Sample code is included - a basic class extending Microsoft_WindowsAzure_Storage_TableEntity, a fetch for the entity set of the contacts and using a custom "objSort" method that sorts based on the returned timestamp values from the object set.

One of the many problems with PHP that detractors are eager to point out is the fact that the language has thousands of global functions. Without the awesome CHM version of the PHP manual - finding your way in this jungle would be a mess. Simply finding a function like array_multisort is not trivial. And even if you find it, understanding it completely is not trivial either!

Not quite finding what he needed in the array_multisort function built into PHP, the author opts to create his own custom sorting function that make sorting 2D arrays simpler.

Quick challenge, lets say you have an array and you want to iterate through your products by [the key of each subarray in $products] Product.ordering ASC. Whats the fastest way to do this?

His solution involves using an array_flip call on the extracted information (using Set::extract), ordering it with ksort and pushing the values back into the $product array in the right order.

Check out the comments for more examples including ones that make use of array_multisort.

I recently upgraded a few things around here (in particular, an upgrade to PHP 5.2), and I noticed two issues that occurred after the upgrade. [...] I easily solved both of these issues.

The correction to the Flickr feed involved changing the namespace information for his request (adding a trailing slash) because the SimpleXML functionality got a bit more particular about the format.

The problem with array_multisort involved adding in a parameter that was implied in previous PHP versions, SORT_STRING, to get his code correctly working.