Question

Im trying to get the closest date to today from array “dates”.

Example: Today is 2011-09-10 -> next closest date from JSON file is “2012-12-20” -> $(‘div’).append(‘date1: ‘ + dates.date1);

Example 2: Today is 2012-12-21 -> next closest date from JSON file is “2012-12-25” -> $(‘div’).append(‘date2: ‘ + dates.date2);

Tried a few solutons, but without success. Need help! Here is JSON file.

[
    {
        "fields": {
            "field1": "Field1",
            "field2": "Field2"
        },
        "dates": {
            "date1": "2012-12-20",
            "date2": "2012-12-25",
            "date3": "2012-12-31"
        }
    }
]

Answer 1

Whoever it was that had a solution like this…. put it back please 🙂

var json = [
    {
    "fields": {
        "field1": "Field1",
        "field2": "Field2"
    },
    "dates": {
        "date1": "2012-12-20",
        "date2": "2012-12-25",
        "date3": "2009-12-31",
        "date4": "2010-12-31"
    }}
]
var dates = [];
var jsondates = json[0].dates;
for (var i in jsondates) {
    dates.push(new Date(jsondates[i]))
}
dates.sort(function(a,b){
  return Math.abs(1 - a / new Date()) - Math.abs(1 - b / new Date())
});

// dates is now ordered by closest to today with index 0 being the closest.

all it needed was a sort algorithm

Edit

Just read the question more closely… you don’t want any dates previous too current date to be considered even if it is closer… this is not to hard either:

for (var i in jsondates) {
    if(new Date(jsondates[i]) >= new Date())
        dates.push(new Date(jsondates[i]))
}
dates.sort(function(a,b){
  return Math.abs(1 - a / new Date()) - Math.abs(1 - b / new Date())
});