PHP shortcut to find smallest number / date - php

Question

I have a situation whereby a series of 15 dates have been created, currently in UNIX timestamps.
Another variable <?php $dateidate = date(strtotime('+20 days')); ?>
The objective is to find the smallest of the 15 other dates that is greater > than $dateidate and display in the format of 'd-m-Y'
Once we've done that is there a way to get the second smallest of the 15 other dates that is greater > than $dateidate and display in the format of 'd-m-Y'.

Answer 1

So, you have 15 dates which are UNIX timestamps. Useful.
Ok, here's what you can do to do it easily:
$datearray = array(timestamp1,timestamp2,etc.) // an array of timestamps
$dateidate = time() + 1728000; //current time + 20 days worth of seconds (20 * 24 * 60 * 60)
foreach($datearray as $key => $date)
{
if($date < $dateidate)
{
unset $datearray[$key]; //Remove timestamp from original array if less than $dateidate
}
}
$earliestdate = min($datearray);
//min returns the least of the values in the array, opposite of max, which you could use to find the latest date in the array
$date = date('d-m-Y',$earliestdate);

Answer 2

strtotime generates a timestamp.
instead of this:
<?php $dateidate = date(strtotime('+20 days')); ?>
do this:
<?php $dateidate = strtotime('+20 days'); ?>
Put all timestamps into an array with special keys so you can distinguish which one is your pivot.
Sort that array and do what you need to do with the sorted array.

Answer 3

This solution filters the $dates array which stores the timestamps using an anonymous function, so in the $shorterOnes array you will have all the timestamps that are bigger than $dateidate.
Then the array is sorted, the first one will be smallest and so on.
$dateidate=strtotime('+20 days');
$dates=array(/*timestamps*/);
$shorterOnes=array_filter($dates, function ($v) use ($dateidate) {
return $v>$dateidate;
});
sort($shorterOnes);
echo date('d-m-Y', $shorterOnes[0]);
echo date('d-m-Y', $shorterOnes[1]);
Anonymous functions only work from PHP 5.3. Lower than that, you need to use create_function().