Problems with date! (Function, that is..:P)

bandfm

Hello everyone,

In an attempt to turn my previously fine photography page into a photoblog page, I've come across a bit of trouble.

I'm probably doing this the wrong way, but my index.php page uses a php query to search my database for images with the current date. It then displays the picture, photographer info, etc. using the photoid key. This all works fine.

The code is as follows (I won't post it all, only the important bits):

$picdate = date("Y-m-d");
......
echo "<img src='submissions/$picdate.jpg'><p><h3><div align='left'>$name, <font color='#999'>By $user. // $picdate</font></div></h3><p>";

That's the index.php page. I also have a date.php page, where the picdate variable is not set and thus i am able to manually specify (using the date.php?picdate=blahdate query in the browser) the date. However, on the date.php page I would like users to be able to simply click the "previous" button and be taken backward. This is simple enough from the index.php page to the date.php page; I simply use the "strtotime" function to modify the date one day backward. However, on the date.php page, I cannot use the strtotime function on the $picdate variable. Thus, I am slightly perplexed as to how to implement the "forward" and backward" buttons into the code; how can I add a day/subtract a day, and how can I ensure that I won't end up with 32/05/05, etc?

I'd appreciate any help, let me know if you need further details.

Cheers,
band

SargeZT

I'm sure there's a more eloquent way of doing this, but one idea pops to mind immediately. Using mktime will automatically correct

$month = $_GET['month'];
$day = $_GET['day'];
$year = $_GET['year'];
$picdate = date("Y-m-d", mktime(0, 0, 0, $month, $day, $year));
$newdate = explode(date("Y-m-d", mktime(0, 0, 0, $month, $day+1, $year)), "-");
$olddate = explode(date("Y-m-d", mktime(0, 0, 0, $month, $day-1, $year)), "-");

Then, run your code on the $picdate variable, which will now be valid. Then, for the previous and next buttons, simply

echo "<a href=\"./index.php?month=$olddate[1]&day=$olddate[2]&year=$olddate[0]\">Previous</a> 
<a href=\"./index.php?month=$newdate[1]&day=$newdate[2]&year=$newdate[0]\">Next</a>";

By the by, thank you for putting some thought into your first post. I always like helping people who actually use capitalization and punctuation.

bandfm

Hi again! Thanks for the help.

Now that that problem's sorted, though, I have yet another:

I have a database for news, and I would like to be able to display news on a php page. Obviously I am able to do this, but I am unsure as to how to present it; that is, I couldn't just call for the php page to search for the current date, as I'm most likely not going to post updates every single day. So, if I add an ID auto-incremental key, is there a procedure I can use to read data from the entry with the highest ID in the NEWS table?

Thanks again,
band

PS. Sarge - Thank you for the help, and likewise thank you for replying with such a well-worded, comprehensive post.