First element of array by condition

Question

I am looking for an elegant way to get the first (and only the first) element of an array that satisfies a given condition.

Simple example:

Input:

[
    ['value' => 100, 'tag' => 'a'],
    ['value' => 200, 'tag' => 'b'],
    ['value' => 300, 'tag' => 'a'], 
 ]

Condition: $element['value'] > 199

Expected output:

['value' => 200, 'tag' => 'b']

I came up with several solutions myself:

1. Iterate over the array, check for the condition and break when found

2. Use array_filter to apply condition and take first value of filtered:

   array_values(
       array_filter(
           $input, 
           function($e){
               return $e['value'] >= 200;
           }
       )
   )[0];
   

Both seems a little cumbersome. Does anyone have a cleaner solution? Am i missing a built-in php function?

Answer 1

The shortest I could find is using current:

current(array_filter($input, function($e) {...}));

current essentially gets the first element, or returns false if its empty.

If the code is being repeated often, it is probably best to extract it to its own function.