Question

161

Find the next closest date in MM/DD/YYYY format JavaScript

rated 0 times [ 165] [ 4] / answers: 1 / hits: 20652 / 8 Years ago, sun, may 29, 2016, 12:00:00

I have an array of dates formatted as MM/DD/YYYY. I need to find the next closest date in the future starting from today. Say today was 1/22/2016 then 2/19/2016 would return.

I've tried doing substrings to get the month, day, year separate and attempting a sort based off those values but surely there has to be a better way.

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nicole

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3 Years ago

answered 8 Years ago mahogany · Accepted Answer

There is no need for a sorting algorithm. You only need to iterate once and find the closest date that is greater or equals today.

Pseudocode

closest <- infinity

foreach date in dates:

    if (date >= now and date < closest) then

        closest <- d

return closest

JavaScript

const dates = [

  '2/3/2035',

  '7/5/2035',

  '1/21/2036',

  '2/19/2036',

  '7/1/2036',

  '10/22/2039',

  '08/12/2039',

];



const now = new Date();



let closest = Infinity;



dates.forEach(function(d) {

   const date = new Date(d);



   if (date >= now && (date < new Date(closest) || date < closest)) {

      closest = d;

   }

});



console.log(closest);