Display the item nearest to current time - php

Question

I have a list of dates/times items in PHP array that are formatted like this:
2019-03-19 00:00:00
2019-03-19 02:30:00
2019-03-19 05:00:00
2019-03-19 14:30:00
2019-03-19 23:59:59
etc.
I'm sure this is easy, I just can't wrap my head around it. What equation do I use to display the item that is closest to the current time without going over.
So if current time is 22:00:00, I would want to display item 14:30:00, rather than 23:59:59.

Answer 1

Since your times are in Y-m-d H:i:s you can just compare them as strings and use a simple foreach loop to get your result:
$dates = array('2019-03-19 00:00:00',
'2019-03-19 02:30:00',
'2019-03-19 05:00:00',
'2019-03-19 14:30:00',
'2019-03-19 23:59:59');
$now = date('Y-m-d H:i:s');
$latest = '';
// add sort($dates) here if they are not already sorted.
foreach ($dates as $date) {
if ($date > $now) break;
$latest = $date;
}
echo $latest;
Demo on 3v4l.org
Note this code assumes your dates are already sorted, if not, add sort($dates) before the foreach loop.

Answer 2

First of all convert all the Dates to this format
$changed_date_1 = date('YmdHis', strtotime($orignaldate_1));
$changed_date_2 = date('YmdHis', strtotime($orignaldate_2));
$changed_date_3 = date('YmdHis', strtotime($orignaldate)_3);
so 2019-03-19 00:00:00 will become 20190319000000, and so on, now they can be compared easily.
than run a foreach loop in which iterate through all these date
$closestdate= date('Y-m-d H:i:s');//intaily set it to current date
$closest_difference= 99999999999999999;//intaily set a big value, more than 15 digits
foreach($datesArray as $item){
$difference = $item - date('YmdHis');
if($difference < $closest_difference){
$closes_difference = $difference;
$closestdate = $item;//this item is closest one. in next iteration this may change
}
}
echo $Closesdate;

Answer 3

/**
* Gets the nearest moment of the same day as $today.
*
* #param string[] $dates - A list of dates (needed format: "Y-m-d H:i:s")
* #param string|null $today - The date used for comparaison. (default is current date)
* #return string|bool - Returns the nearest date, or false.
*/
function getNearestDate(array $dates, ?string $today = null) {
if (!$today) {
$today = date('Y-m-d H:i:s');
}
$fnDT = function($d) {
return DateTime::createFromFormat('Y-m-d H:i:s', $d);
};
usort($dates, function($a, $b) use ($fnDT, $today) {
$da = abs($fnDT($today)->getTimestamp() - $fnDT($a)->getTimestamp());
$db = abs($fnDT($today)->getTimestamp() - $fnDT($b)->getTimestamp());
return $da - $db;
});
$nearest = $dates[0];
if ($fnDT($nearest)->format('Y-m-d') !== $fnDT($today)->format('Y-m-d')) {
print_r('No date of the same day.');
return false;
}
return $nearest;
}
Test it on 3v4l.org