Trying to get lowest value before comma from string using explode - php

Question

I am new to php but learning fast. I am trying to extract the lowest price from a string of values like -
"12/6/2020:Some Text:345.44,13/6/2020:Some Text:375.88,14/6/2020:Some Text:275.81"
I need to get the value just before each comma and then get the lowest of these values. I know I can use min() if I get these values in a string. For the above example I need 275.81 (lowest).
Please see my code below. I am trying to explode the values and then put in a string. I dont think this is the best way by far and not having any luck. is there a better/cleaner way to do this?
$dates = explode(',', $resultx);
foreach($dates as $datew) {
$dater = explode(':', $datew);
echo $dater[2]. ",";
}

Answer 1

You can use regular expressions to extract the values, and then use min() to get the minimum value
<?php
$input = "2/6/2020:Some Text:345.44,13/6/2020:Some Text:375.88,14/6/2020:Some Text:275.81";
$pattern = '/(?:[^\:]+)\:(?:[^\:]+)\:(\d+\.\d+)\,*/';
if (preg_match_all($pattern, $input, $matches)) {
$minimumValue = min($matches[1]);
echo "minimum is: " . $minimumValue;
}
Here is a working example on 3v4l.org
In the pattern (?:[^\:]+) - equals any symbol, except the colon :
Section (\d+\.\d+) says that we need to capture the sequence containing two numbers with a dot . between them.
We look for two sections with any symbols, except :, and then capturing the third sections containing numbers, and everything ends with an optional comma ,
P.S. you could still get the result with your current approach
<?php
$input = "2/6/2020:Some Text:345.44,13/6/2020:Some Text:375.88,14/6/2020:Some Text:275.81";
$minimumValue = null;
$dates = explode(',', $input);
foreach($dates as $datew) {
$dater = explode(':', $datew);
$currentValue = floatval($dater[2]);
if (is_null($minimumValue) || $minimumValue > $currentValue) {
$minimumValue = $currentValue;
}
}
echo $minimumValue;
Here is a link to your approach on 3v4l.org