Find a matching or closest value in an array

Pass in the number you're searching for as the first parameter and the array of numbers to the second:

function getClosest($search, $arr) {
   $closest = null;
   foreach ($arr as $item) {
      if ($closest === null || abs($search - $closest) > abs($item - $search)) {
         $closest = $item;
      }
   }
   return $closest;
}

A particular lazy approach is having PHP sort the array by the distance to the searched number:

$num = 3;    
$array = array(0, 5, 10, 11, 12, 20);
$smallest = [];

foreach ($array as $i) {
    $smallest[$i] = abs($i - $num);
}
asort($smallest);
print key($smallest);

This is high-performance function I wrote for sorted big arrays

Tested, main loop needs only ~20 iterations for an array with 20000 elements.

Please mind array has to be sorted (ascending)!

define('ARRAY_NEAREST_DEFAULT',    0);
define('ARRAY_NEAREST_LOWER',      1);
define('ARRAY_NEAREST_HIGHER',     2);

/**
 * Finds nearest value in numeric array. Can be used in loops.
 * Array needs to be non-assocative and sorted.
 * 
 * @param array $array
 * @param int $value
 * @param int $method ARRAY_NEAREST_DEFAULT|ARRAY_NEAREST_LOWER|ARRAY_NEAREST_HIGHER
 * @return int
 */
function array_numeric_sorted_nearest($array, $value, $method = ARRAY_NEAREST_DEFAULT) {    
    $count = count($array);

    if($count == 0) {
        return null;
    }    

    $div_step               = 2;    
    $index                  = ceil($count / $div_step);    
    $best_index             = null;
    $best_score             = null;
    $direction              = null;    
    $indexes_checked        = Array();

    while(true) {        
        if(isset($indexes_checked[$index])) {
            break ;
        }

        $curr_key = $array[$index];
        if($curr_key === null) {
            break ;
        }

        $indexes_checked[$index] = true;

        // perfect match, nothing else to do
        if($curr_key == $value) {
            return $curr_key;
        }

        $prev_key = $array[$index - 1];
        $next_key = $array[$index + 1];

        switch($method) {
            default:
            case ARRAY_NEAREST_DEFAULT:
                $curr_score = abs($curr_key - $value);

                $prev_score = $prev_key !== null ? abs($prev_key - $value) : null;
                $next_score = $next_key !== null ? abs($next_key - $value) : null;

                if($prev_score === null) {
                    $direction = 1;                    
                }else if ($next_score === null) {
                    break 2;
                }else{                    
                    $direction = $next_score < $prev_score ? 1 : -1;                    
                }
                break;
            case ARRAY_NEAREST_LOWER:
                $curr_score = $curr_key - $value;
                if($curr_score > 0) {
                    $curr_score = null;
                }else{
                    $curr_score = abs($curr_score);
                }

                if($curr_score === null) {
                    $direction = -1;
                }else{
                    $direction = 1;
                }                
                break;
            case ARRAY_NEAREST_HIGHER:
                $curr_score = $curr_key - $value;
                if($curr_score < 0) {
                    $curr_score = null;
                }

                if($curr_score === null) {
                    $direction = 1;
                }else{
                    $direction = -1;
                }  
                break;
        }

        if(($curr_score !== null) && ($curr_score < $best_score) || ($best_score === null)) {
            $best_index = $index;
            $best_score = $curr_score;
        }

        $div_step *= 2;
        $index += $direction * ceil($count / $div_step);
    }

    return $array[$best_index];
}

• ARRAY_NEAREST_DEFAULT finds nearest element
• ARRAY_NEAREST_LOWER finds nearest element which is LOWER
• ARRAY_NEAREST_HIGHER finds nearest element which is HIGHER

Usage:

$test = Array(5,2,8,3,9,12,20,...,52100,52460,62000);

// sort an array and use array_numeric_sorted_nearest
// for multiple searches. 
// for every iteration it start from half of chunk where
// first chunk is whole array
// function doesn't work with unosrted arrays, and it's much
// faster than other solutions here for sorted arrays

sort($test);
$nearest = array_numeric_sorted_nearest($test, 8256);
$nearest = array_numeric_sorted_nearest($test, 3433);
$nearest = array_numeric_sorted_nearest($test, 1100);
$nearest = array_numeric_sorted_nearest($test, 700);

<?php
$arr = array(0, 5, 10, 11, 12, 20);

function getNearest($arr,$var){
    usort($arr, function($a,$b) use ($var){
        return  abs($a - $var) - abs($b - $var);
    });
    return array_shift($arr);
}
?>