I had a situation where I needed to obtain the next available key in an array, which is the highest + 1.
For example, if the array is $data = ['1' => 'something, '34' => 'something else'], then I needed to calculate 35 to add a new element to the array that had a key higher than any of the others. In the case of an empty array I needed 1 as next available key.
This is the solution that worked:
$highest = 0;
foreach ($data as $idx => $dummy) {
if ($idx > $highest) $highest = $idx;
}
$highest++;
It will work in all cases, empty array or not. If you only need to find the highest key rather than highest key + 1, delete the last line.
You will then get a value of 0 if the array is empty.