What are the best practices for sorting and ordering data retrieved from a SQL database using PHP?

When retrieving data from a SQL database using PHP, it is important to properly sort and order the results to ensure they are displayed correctly. One way to achieve this is by using the ORDER BY clause in your SQL query to sort the data based on a specific column or columns. Additionally, you can use PHP functions like mysqli_fetch_assoc() or mysqli_fetch_array() to fetch the results and then use PHP functions like array_multisort() to further sort the data as needed. 

// Example SQL query to retrieve data from a database table and sort it by a specific column
$sql = "SELECT * FROM table_name ORDER BY column_name ASC";
$result = mysqli_query($conn, $sql);

// Fetch the results using mysqli_fetch_assoc() and store them in an array
$data = array();
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) {
    $data[] = $row;
}

// Sort the data array by a specific key (e.g., 'column_name')
array_multisort(array_column($data, 'column_name'), SORT_ASC, $data);

// Display the sorted data
foreach ($data as $row) {
    echo $row['column_name'] . "<br>";
}

Keywords

SQL database sorting ordering PHP functions data retrieval

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