Sorting accented characters in Ruby correctly.rb

class String
  # note: very rough, does not handle caps (but that could be added), just something to help sort accented characters correctly...
  TRANSLATION_HASH = {"’"=>"'","åäáàâ" => "a", "ëéèê" => "e", "ïíìî" => "i", "öóòô" => "o", "üúùû" => "u", "ß" => "ss"}
  UNUNICODE = Hash[*TRANSLATION_HASH.map{|u,as| u.unpack("U*").inject([]){|sum,e| sum << e; sum << as}}.flatten]
  def un_unicode
    self.unpack("U*").map{|c| UNUNICODE[c] ? UNUNICODE[c] : c.chr}.join
  end
end

# use case
# array_of_strings_with_some_unicode.sort_by{|s| s.un_unicode }

Or you can use ActiveSupport::Inflector.transliterate

http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveSupport/Inflector.html#method-i-transliterate