Get x highest values from an array including identical values - php

Question

I'm using the following code to retrieve the highest 3 numbers from an array.
$a = array(1,2,5,10,15,20,10,15);
arsort($a, SORT_NUMERIC);
$highest = array_slice($a, 0, 3);
This code correctly gives me the highest three numbers array(20,15,10); however, I'm interested in getting the highest 3 numbers including the ones that are identical. In this example, I'm expecting to get an array like array(10, 10, 15, 15, 20)

Answer 1

Might be simpler but my brain is tired. Use arsort() to get the highest first, count the values to get unique keys with their count and slice the first 3 (make sure to pass true to preserve keys):
arsort($a, SORT_NUMERIC);
$counts = array_slice(array_count_values($a), 0, 3, true);
Then loop those 3 and fill an array with the number value the number of times it was counted and merge with the previous result:
$highest = array();
foreach($counts as $value => $count) {
$highest = array_merge($highest, array_fill(0, $count, $value));
}

Answer 2

You can use a function like this:
$a = array(1,2,5,10,15,20,10,15); //-- Original Array
function get3highest($a){
$h = array(); //-- highest
if(count($a) >= 3){ //-- Checking length
$c = 0; //-- Counter
while ($c < 3 || in_array($a[count($a)-1],$h) ){ //-- 3 elements or repeated value
$max = array_pop($a);
if(!in_array($max,$h)){
++$c;
}
$h[] = $max;
}
sort($h); //-- sorting
}
return $h; //-- values
}
print_r(get3Highest($a));
Of course you can improve this function to accept a dinamic value of "highest" values.

Answer 3

The below function may be usefull
$a = array(1,2,5,10,15,20,10,15);
function getMaxValue($array,$n){
$max_array = array(); // array to store all the max values
for($i=0;$i<$n;$i++){ // loop to get number of highest values
$keys = array_keys($array,max($array)); // get keys
if(is_array($keys)){ // if keys is array
foreach($keys as $v){ // loop array
$max_array[]=$array[$v]; // set values to max_array
unset($array[$v]); // unset the keys to get next max value
}
}else{ // if not array
$max_array[]=$array[$keys]; // set values to max_array
unset($array[$keys]); // unset the keys to get next max value
}
}
return $max_array;
}
$g = getMaxValue($a,3);
Out Put:
Array
(
[0] => 20
[1] => 15
[2] => 15
[3] => 10
[4] => 10
)
You can modify it to add conditions.

Answer 4

I thought of a couple of other possibilities.
First one:
Find the lowest of the top three values
$min = array_slice(array_unique($a, SORT_NUMERIC), -3)[0];
Filter out any lower values
$top3 = array_filter($a, function($x) use ($min) { return $x >= $min; });
Sort the result
sort($top3);
Advantages: less code
Disadvantages: less inefficient (sorts, iterates the entire array, sorts the result)
Second one:
Sort the array in reverse order
rsort($a);
Iterate the array, appending items to your result array until you've appended three distinct items.
$n = 0;
$prev = null;
$top = [];
foreach ($a as $x) {
if ($x != $prev) $n++;
if ($n > 3) break;
$top[] = $x;
$prev = $x;
}
Advantages: more efficient (sorts only once, iterates only as much as necessary)
Disadvantages: more code
This gives the results in descending order. You can optionally use array_unshift($top, $x) instead of $top[] = $x; to get it in ascending order, but I think I've read that array_unshift is less efficient because it reindexes the array after each addition, so if optimization is important it would probably be better to just use $top[] = $x; and then iterate the result in reverse order.