How can I do this? - Changing link automatically on a certain date

[joshmpratt]

I've got a weekly pdf that I'd like to display on a website. The filename is labeled for the date of a weekend (ex: update.0609.16-17.pdf (year, month, dates)).

I'd like to be able to upload the pdf on the thursday or friday before the weekend, and then have a link change to display the new pdf when the date turns to Sunday. That way, I don't need to do it manually when I'm not at work over the weekend.

Any idea how I might do this?

Thanks,

• Josh

[joshmpratt]

I think I might have an idea how to do it.. I'm just a little stuck on one thing...

If I use the $D = date('d') for the date, is there a way that I can have it return the previous day?

I'm not super familiar with the date() command. What if $D ends up being 01. If I subtract 1 from that, I'd get 00 instead of 31 or 30 right? Is there some kind of command that can give me what yesterday's day was?

[joshmpratt]

Would this be the accurate way to get yesterdays day?

$D = date('d', time()-86400);

Would it work still if the date is January 01 or March 01? Is it smart enough to know if last months last day was 28, 29, 30, or 31?

[bogu]

joshmpratt wrote:

Would this be the accurate way to get yesterdays day?

$D = date('d', time()-86400);

That wont be the accurate yesterdays day ...

This whould be the accurate yesterdays day:

$D = date('d', mktime(0,0,0,date('n'),date('j')-1));

joshmpratt wrote:

Is it smart enough to know if last months last day was 28, 29, 30, or 31?

yes it is smart enough ...

Anyway u know there is an edit button u dont need to make 3 posts in 10 min ...

GL & HF coding. 😃

[Installer]

For finding the latest file, assuming that the file name format is consistent and that the update files are in the same directory, this function (not pretty, untested, and in need of more validating and error-checking) might work:

function current_update_file($dir = '.', $prefix = 'update.') 
{
    $offset = strlen($prefix);
    $files = scandir($dir);
    rsort($files);
    foreach ($files as $file) {
        if (substr($file, 0, $offset) == $prefix) {
            $file_date = str_replace('-', '', substr($file, $offset, 7)); 
            if (strtotime($file_date) <= time()) {
                return $file;
            }
        }
    }
}

You can see how changing the file-naming scheme (e.g. to "2006-09-16-17.update.pdf") could simplify your coding.

[joshmpratt]

I haven't changed over any of the date codes to using the mktime() yet, but here's my code so far. It seems like it works so far. I think I made it so that if the dates of the weekend happen to be on two seperate months, that it will just display the first month, which is fine.

Any suggestions?

<?
$Y = substr(date('Y'), 2, 2);
$m = date('m');
$M = date('M');
$D1 = date('d', time()-86400);
$D2 = date('d');
$newpdf = 'discussion.' . $Y . $m . '.' . $D1 . '-' . $D2 . '.pdf';
$found = "no";

if (is_file("/www".$newpdf)) {
echo '<img src="/g/link.gif" alt="" class="icon" /><a href="pdf/discussion/' . $newpdf . '" target="blank">Group Discussion Questions - ' . $M . ' ' . $D1 . '/' . $D2 . '</a>'."\n";
$found = "yes";
}
$i = 1;
while($found == "no") {
$D2 = date('d', time()-(86400 $i));
$D1 = date('d', time()-(86400 ($i + 1)));
$Y = substr(date('Y', time()-(86400 $i)), 2, 2);
$m = date('m', time()-(86400 ($i + 1)));
$M = date('M', time()-(86400 * $i));
$currentpdf = 'discussion.' . $Y . $m . '.' . $D1 . '-' . $D2 . '.pdf';
if (is_file("/www/pdf/discussion/".$currentpdf)) {
echo '<img src="/g/link.gif" alt="" class="icon" /><a href="pdf/discussion/' . $currentpdf . '" target="blank">Group Discussion Questions - ' . $M . ' ' . $D1 . '/' . $D2 . '</a>'."\n";
$found = "yes";
}
$i++;
}
?>

[Weedpacket]

joshmpratt wrote:

$D2 = date('d', time()-86400);

As bogu noted, this isn't accurate: not all days are 86,400 seconds long.