Weeks in PHP

modify

At my site (http://zeal.phpwebhosting.com), I'm trying to get it all sorted out so that users can select all the postings for that day, that week, month, or year. The only one I have been unable to figure out is the week; does anybody know how to (reliably) grab all news postings from a 7-day timespan? Simply subtracting seven from the current day won't work, because then if it's the beginning of the month (the day would be "01"), then the value would be "-6". I can't think of a reliable way to step back into the previous month, either.

For reference, my webhost is using the most current version of PHP, and I'm using MySQL for the database.

Any help would be apprecaited.

robertjackson

Using mktime (www.php.net/mktime) and date (www.php.net/date) should work.

For example:
Today is
date ("M-d-Y", mktime (0,0,0,05,18,2001));
or
date ("M-d-Y")

Seven days ago would be:
date ("M-d-Y", mktime (0,0,0,05,(18-7),2001));

You could get fancier so that
$timespan = # // number is from user's selection like radio buttons or pulldown menu
date ("M-d-Y", mktime (0,0,0,05,(18-$timespan),2001));

If you search from my e-mail in the comments on the two php.net, you'll find some code about selecting 'last Sunday'.

Hope this helps.

Rob

modify

-----CODE-----
$today = date("Ymd");
$thisday = date("d");
$thisday = $thisday -7;
$thismonth = date("m");
$thisyear = date("Y");
$week = date("Ymd", mktime(0,0,0,$thismonth, $thisday,$thisyear));
$query = "SELECT * FROM news order by NUMER_DATE DESC;";
$mysql_result = mysql_query($query,$mysql_link);
while ($row = mysql_fetch_row($mysql_result))
{
if ($row[7] >= $week && $row[7] <= $today)
print("<A HREF='index.php?action=viewrec&rec=$row[0]'>$row[1]</A> (<i>$row[2]</i>)<br>");
}
-----/CODE-----
The above does NOT work. numer_date (row[7]) is a numerical representation of the date the news was posted. e.g. 200105181423 (year, month, day, military hour, minute).

-----CODE-----
$query = "SELECT * FROM news WHERE NUMER_DATE >= $week AND NUMER_DATE <= $today order by NUMER_DATE DESC;";
-----/CODE-----

This is the other (simpler) query I tried, but that returns an empty set, also. The query above is the only thing (except for the if-then) that changed between the CODE blocks.

When I go through telnet and type

select numer_date from news;

into MySQL, I get all of the results (just like I wanted)

+--------------+
| numer_date |
+--------------+
| 200104211208 |
| 200104211445 |
| 200104222222 |
| 200104222231 |
| 200104250142 |
| 200104261442 |
| 200104270053 |
| 200104271208 |
| 200104270053 |
| 200104271208 |
| 200104271453 |
| 200104281154 |
| 200104281631 |
| 200104292310 |
| 200105011614 |
| 200105020300 |
| 200105021605 |
| 200105041605 |
| 200105050659 |
| 200105132242 |
| 200105162237 |
| 200105171045 |
| 200105171621 |
| 200105181326 |
| 200105181726 |
+--------------+
23 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Now... the question is... why won't this work if I use the code you provided?

I checked to see what values \$today and \$week have, and they have the correct values.

robertjackson

My guess is that the conditional combined with the date format is messing things up.

In your sample code, $today has a value of 20010518 and $week will have a value of 20010511.

Now you're comparing to look for the number 200104211208 (using your first row in the db table) to be both greater than 20010511 and 20010518. Clearly this numerical comparison will fail.

Try adding the hour and minutes to $today and $week. Alternately, try
$today = date("Ymd").'0000';

Rob