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// Leveraging the ?? coalescing operator:
$el = $array[array_key_first($array)] ?? 'Array is empty';

Danger Will Robinson!

Emphasis mine:

And I wanted to get the first item out of that array without knowing the key for it

But what is the first item?

With lists it is obvious, it is item number 0:

 [ 'apple', 'banana', 'orange' ] // Apple it is.

[ 'a' => 'x', 'b' => 'y' ] is called an array in PHP, but is more aptly called a dictionary and has no "natural" order. So the code above (and the codes below) will return the "first" key in order of definition, but that order might change unintendedly, leading to subtle and difficult-to-track bugs:

// [ 'a' => 1, 'b' => 2 ]
// The first key is "a".
unset($arr['a']);
// [ 'b' => 2 ]
$arr['a'] = 1;
// [ 'b' => 2, 'a' => 1 ]
// The first key is now "b".

So, even if it might be a performance killer in some scenarios, you might perhaps be better served by

$arr[min(array_keys($arr))] ?? 'Array is empty';

or consider whether the "first key" is what you actually want.

PHP < 7.3

If you don't know enough about the array (you're not sure whether the first key is foo or bar) then the array might well also be, maybe, empty.

So it would be best to check, especially if there is the chance that the returned value might be the boolean FALSE:

$value = empty($arr) ? $default : reset($arr);

The above code uses reset and so has side effects (it resets the internal pointer of the array), so you might prefer using array_slice to quickly access a copy of the first element of the array:

$value = $default;
foreach(array_slice($arr, 0, 1) as $value);

Assuming you want to get both the key and the value separately, you need to add the fourth parameter to array_slice:

foreach(array_slice($arr, 0, 1, true) as $key => $value);

To get the first item as a pair (key => value):

$item = array_slice($arr, 0, 1, true);

Simple modification to get the last item, key and value separately:

foreach(array_slice($arr, -1, 1, true) as $key => $value);

performance

If the array is not really big, you don't actually need array_slice and can rather get a copy of the whole keys array, then get the first item:

$key = count($arr) ? array_keys($arr)[0] : null;

If you have a very big array, though, the call to array_keys will require significant time and memory more than array_slice (both functions walk the array, but the latter terminates as soon as it has gathered the required number of items - which is one).

A notable exception is when you have the first key which points to a very large and convoluted object. In that case array_slice will duplicate that first large object, while array_keys will only grab the keys.

PHP 7.3+

PHP 7.3 onwards implements array_key_first() as well as array_key_last(). These are explicitly provided to access first and last keys efficiently without resetting the array's internal state as a side effect.

So since PHP 7.3 the first value of $array may be accessed with

$array[array_key_first($array)];

You still had better check that the array is not empty though, or you will get an error:

$firstKey = array_key_first($array);
if (null === $firstKey) {
    $value = "Array is empty"; // An error should be handled here
} else {
    $value = $array[$firstKey];
}

Fake loop that breaks on the first iteration:

$key = $value = NULL;
foreach ($array as $key => $value) {
    break;
}

echo "$key = $value\n";

Or use each() (warning: deprecated as of PHP 7.2.0):

reset($array);
list($key, $value) = each($array);

echo "$key = $value\n";

There's a few options. array_shift() will return the first element, but it will also remove the first element from the array.

$first = array_shift($array);

current() will return the value of the array that its internal memory pointer is pointing to, which is the first element by default.

$first = current($array);

If you want to make sure that it is pointing to the first element, you can always use reset().

reset($array);
$first = current($array);

another easy and simple way to do it use array_values

array_values($array)[0]

Just so that we have some other options: reset($arr); good enough if you're not trying to keep the array pointer in place, and with very large arrays it incurs an minimal amount of overhead. That said, there are some problems with it:

$arr = array(1,2);
current($arr); // 1
next($arr);    // 2
current($arr); // 2
reset($arr);   // 1
current($arr); // 1 !This was 2 before! We've changed the array's pointer.

The way to do this without changing the pointer:

$arr[reset(array_keys($arr))]; // OR
reset(array_values($arr));

The benefit of $arr[reset(array_keys($arr))]; is that it raises an warning if the array is actually empty.

Test if the a variable is an array before getting the first element. When dynamically creating the array if it is set to null you get an error.

For Example:

if(is_array($array))
{
  reset($array);
  $first = key($array);
}

You could use array_values

$firstValue = array_values($array)[0];

We can do $first = reset($array);

Instead of

reset($array);
$first = current($array);

As reset()

returns the first element of the array after reset;

Use reset() function to get the first item out of that array without knowing the key for it like this.

$value = array('foo' => 400, 'bar' => 'xyz');
echo reset($value);

output

400

You can make:

$values = array_values($array);
echo $values[0];

Starting with PHP 7.3.0 it's possible to do without resetting the internal pointer. You would use array_key_first. If you're sure that your array has values it in then you can just do:

$first = $array[array_key_first($array)];

More likely, you'll want to handle the case where the array is empty:

$first = (empty($array)) ? $default : $array[array_key_first($array)];

You can try this.

To get first value of the array :-

<?php
   $large_array = array('foo' => 'bar', 'hello' => 'world');
   var_dump(current($large_array));
?>

To get the first key of the array

<?php
   $large_array = array('foo' => 'bar', 'hello' => 'world');
   $large_array_keys = array_keys($large_array);
   var_dump(array_shift($large_array_keys));
?>

In one line:

$array['foo'] = 400;
$array['bar'] = 'xyz';
echo 'First value= ' . $array[array_keys($array)[0]];

Expanded:

$keys = array_keys($array);
$key = $keys[0];
$value = $array[$key];
echo 'First value = ' . $value;

You could use array_shift

I do this to get the first and last value. This works with more values too.

$a = array(
    'foo' => 400,
    'bar' => 'xyz',
);
$first = current($a);   //400
$last = end($a);    //xyz