How to sort an NSMutableArray with custom objects in it?

碰到了个问题，谷歌了一下，觉得这个回答，回答的真好，因此在这里记录一下。

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/805547/how-to-sort-an-nsmutablearray-with-custom-objects-in-it

How to sort an NSMutableArray with custom objects in it?

What I want to do seems pretty simple, but I can't find any answers on the web. I have anNSMutableArray of objects, let's say they are 'Person' objects. I want to sort the NSMutableArrayby 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?

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: NSSortDescriptor *sortDescriptor; sortDescriptor = [[[NSSortDescriptor alloc] initWithKey:@"birthDate" ascending:YES] autorelease]; NSArray *sortDescriptors = [NSArray arrayWithObject:sortDescriptor]; NSArray *sortedArray; sortedArray = [drinkDetails sortedArrayUsingDescriptors:sortDescriptors]; You can easily sort by multiple keys by adding more than one to the array. Using custom comparator-methods is possible as well. Have a look at the documentation. Blocks (shiny!) There's also the possibility of sorting with a block since Mac OS X 10.6 and iOS 4: NSArray *sortedArray; sortedArray = [drinkDetails sortedArrayUsingComparator:^NSComparisonResult(id a, id b) { NSDate *first = [(Person*)a birthDate]; NSDate *second = [(Person*)b birthDate]; return [first compare:second]; }]; share | improve this answer edited Mar 12 at 14:55 community wiki 10 revs, 4 users 96% Georg Schölly

24   The first example has a bug: You compare the birthDate instance variable in one object with the other object itself, rather than its birthDate variable. –  Martin Gjaldbaek  May 17 '11 at 8:52 38   @Martin: Thanks! Funny that nobody else noticed before I got 75 upvotes for it. –  Georg Schölly  May 17 '11 at 11:18 28   Because this is the accepted answer, and therefore probably considered definitive by most users, it might be helpful to add a 3rd, block-based example so that users will be aware it exists too. –  orange80  Dec 2 '11 at 20:30 3   @orange80: I tried that. I don't own a Mac any more, so it would be nice if you could look at the code. –  Georg Schölly  Dec 4 '11 at 20:25 3   @GeorgSchölly: You got it exactly right. –  orange80  Dec 5 '11 at 0:07