php sort properties of object

You could wrap your source object into something that implements the http://docs.php.net/class.iterator and returns the properties of the source object in a given sort order. class Foo implements Iterator { protected $src; protected $order; protected $valid; public function __construct(/*object*/ $source, array $sortorder) { $this->src = $source; $this->order = $sortorder; $this->valid = !empty($this->order); } public function current() { return $this->src->{current($this->order)}; } public function key() { return key($this->order); } public function next() { $this->valid = false!==next($this->order); } public function rewind() { reset($this->order); $this->valid = !empty($this->order); } public function valid() { return $this->valid; } } class Book { public $id='idval'; public $author='authorval'; public $date='dateval'; public $title='titleval'; } function doSomething($it) { foreach($it as $p) { echo ' ', $p, "\n"; } } $book = new Book; echo "passing \$book to doSomething: \n"; doSomething($book); $it = new Foo($book, array('title', 'author', 'date', 'id')); echo "passing \$it to doSomething: \n"; doSomething($it); prints passing $book to doSomething: idval authorval dateval titleval passing $it to doSomething: titleval authorval dateval idval

Try this. The difference between this method and the method proposed in the first response is that the method get_class_vars returns default properties of the class, whereas get_object_vars returns the properties of the given object. <?php class Book { public $title; public $author; public $date; public $id; } $b = new Book(); $b->title = "title"; $object_vars = get_object_vars($b); ksort($object_vars); foreach($object_vars as $prop=>$val) echo $prop."->".$val."<br>"; ?>