PHP Blog, need to make a good looking archives section.

Question

So! Basically I have a database with a load of blog posts, these are all sorted by a UNIX timestamp, and what I need is a way to make this code spit out headers when appropriate, so that it will output something like this:

2008

November

Title 1 - Date Goes Here
Title 2 - Date Goes Here

December

Title 3 - Date Goes Here

2009

January

Title 4 - Date Goes Here

etcetera

Here's my code so far, it works until the comparison of the year, and I still need to come up with a good way of how to make it compare months in a sensible fashion, so that January indeed comes after December, and not some ludicrous 13th month.

[code]

<?php   
   if ($db = new PDO('sqlite:./db/blog.sqlite3')) {
         $stmt = $db->prepare("SELECT * FROM news ORDER BY date DESC");
         if ($stmt->execute()) {
               while ($row = $stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_NUM)) {
                     $current_year = date("Y", $row[1]);
                     $current_month = date("m", $row[1]);
                     if ($current_year > $last_year) {
                           echo "<h1>" . $current_year . "</h1>";
                           $last_year = $current_year;
                     }
                     echo "<tr>";
                     echo "<td align='left'><a href='view_post.php?post_id=". $row[1] ."'>" . $row['0'] . " - " . date("Y-m-d, H:i:s", $row[1]) . "</a></td>";
                     echo "</tr>";
               }
         }
   } else {
         die($sqliteerror);
   }
?>

[/code]

Answer 1

With unix timestamps you could do something like (pseudo code obviously)

prev_month = null
prev_year = null
foreach results as r
    new_month = date('F', r[timestamp]);
    new_year = date('Y', r[timestamp]);
    if(prev_month != new_month)
        //display month
    /if

    if(prev_year != new_year)
        //display year
    /if

    // display other info

    prev_month = new_month
    prev_year = new_year
/foreach

Answer 2

I would be tempted to do this in two steps, separating the database fetching from the display/html logic, for example:

<?php
//snip

//make big array of archive
$archive = array();
while ($row = $stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_NUM)) {
    $year = date("Y", $row[1]);
    $month = date("m", $row[1]);

    if (!isset($archive[$year])) {
        $archive[$year] = array();
    }

    if (!isset($archive[$year][$month])) {
        $archive[$year][$month] = array();
    }

    $archive[$year][$month][] = $row;
}
//snip

//loop over array and display items 
?>

<?php foreach ($achive as $year => $months): ?>
    <h1><?php echo $year; ?></h1>

    <?php foreach ($months as $month => $posts): ?>
         <h2><?php echo $month; ?></h2>
         <ul>
         <?php foreach ($posts as $post): ?>
             <li><?php echo $post[0]; ?> etc...</li>
         <?php endforeach; ?>
         </ul>
    <?php endforeach; ?>
<?php endforeach; ?>

You should get the years and the months in reverse order as per your SQL query. I haven't tested this, but it should be vaguely correct.

Answer 3

<?php   
   if ($db = new PDO('sqlite:./db/blog.sqlite3')) {
         $stmt = $db->prepare("SELECT * FROM news ORDER BY date DESC");
         if ($stmt->execute()) {
               while ($row = $stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_NUM)) {
                     $current_year = date("Y", $row[1]);
                     $current_month = date("n", $row[1]);   # n instead of m
                     if ($current_year > $last_year) {
                           echo "<h1>" . $current_year . "</h1>";
                           echo "<h2>" . $current_month . "</h2>";
                           $last_year = $current_year;
                           $last_month = $current_month;
                     }
                     elseif ($current_month > $last_month) {
                           echo "<h2>" . $current_month . "</h2>";
                           $last_month = $current_month;
                     }
                     echo "<tr>";
                     echo "<td align='left'><a href='view_post.php?post_id=". $row[1] ."'>" . $row['0'] . " - " . date("Y-m-d, H:i:s", $row[1]) . "</a></td>";
                     echo "</tr>";
               }
         }
   } else {
         die($sqliteerror);
   }
?>

I did not test it. Idea: If the year changes, also the month changes. The check for the next month happens only if there is not a change of the year, which is the only case where lastmonth might be bigger than currentmonth.