PHP: Find the next closest month in Array

Question

Given an array which looks like this:

$months = array("mar","jun","sep","dec");

And the current month:

$current_month = date("m");

Is there a way to find the next closest month to the current month?

For example:

if the current month is May, the result should be 'jun'
if the current month is April, the result should be 'jun'
if the current month is March, the result should be 'mar'
if the current month is October, the result should be 'dec'

Assign a number to each month and then check which number is the closest to your current month/number. — Rizier123, May 22 '17 at 14:13
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9875076/adding-three-months-to-a-date-in-php. You should try to add 1 moth to the current — xsami, May 22 '17 at 14:14
The array is exactly this ? what do you mean whit looks like this ? — xsami, May 22 '17 at 15:28
The array looks like this in the sense that it holds 1 month name of each of the 4 quarters in the year. Could be any month from each quarter but in this case, I am looking for the last month of the current quarter. — r1pster, May 22 '17 at 15:44

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered May 22 '17 at 14:25

3

Assuming that you want to get the last month of the current quarter, you could do it like this:

$monthName = ["mar", "jun", "sep", "dec"][floor((date('n') - 1) / 3)];

answered May 22 '17 at 14:25

trincot

317,000
35
244
286

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered May 22 '17 at 14:24

Just need to add all the months and print the position of the next moth.

<?php
$months = array("jan", "feb", "mar", "apr", "may", "jun", "jul", "aug", "sep", "oct", "nov", "dec");
$current_month = date("m");

// The next moth must be the current month + 1 but as the index start from 0 we dont need to add + 1
// So we print 
echo $months[ $current_month % count($months)];

As the array position start from 0 you don't need to add +1

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered May 22 '17 at 14:59

I like @Rizier123's solution so I thought I'd write up an implementation.

First, let's convert the months array into numerical values which represent the month. We're going to preserve the text as the key to make the matching process easier at the end. If you have control over those months then it's quite simple:

$months = [ 'mar' => 3, 'jun' => 6, 'sep' => 9, 'dec' => 12];

If you don't have control over the array you'll need to run it through array_map() and use date to convert:

$month_keys = $months;

$months = array_map( function( $month ) {
    return date( 'm', strtotime( $month ) );
}, $months );

$months = array_combine( $month_keys, $months );

Then let's find the next closest value in the array:

$closest_month = null;

foreach ( $months as $month_text => $month_num ) {
    if ( $current_month <= $month_num ) {
        $closest_month = $month_text;
        break;
    }
}

$closest_month should now match all of the conditions set out in your question.

PHP: Find the next closest month in Array

3 Answers3