How to display Months cronologically from a DB

ali_p

Hi,

I have a table in a database full of courses which have dates. I have a date field which has the sql date and the another month field so i can group courses in the same month together for display together. i have another field for year in order to group and display year together also.

My problem is that i would like the months, when they are displayed, to appear cronologically as they appear to be coming out of the database in no particular order. And i can onky seem to make it appear alphabetically ASC or DESC.

Has anyone any ideas on a work around for this situation.

Here is my code below.

Thanks in advance

$sqlo="
SELECT DISTINCT programme_month,programme_year
FROM calendar


 $last_category = 'ween';
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($resulto)) {
  if ($last_category != $row['programme_year']) {
    $last_category = $row['programme_year'];
    echo '<br><span class="boldhead"> '.$row['programme_year'].' Calendar</span><br>';
  }

//$prog_id=$row['prog_id'];
$programme_month=$row['programme_month'];
//$story=$row['story'];
//

  echo "<a href=\"calendar2.php?programme_month=$programme_month\">$programme_month</a><br>";
}

scrupul0us

how about showing us some data... if u are storing the data numerically instead of alphabetically then you shouldnt be having a problem...

i have a feeling you are storing them alphabetically... change to numerics, sort the output from the database and use the date() function to convert it to alpha during the output

ali_p

This is what i am getting displayed:

2007 Calendar
April
February
January
March
May
June

i have a feeling you are storing them alphabetically... change to numerics, sort the output from the database and use the date() function to convert it to alpha during the output

I'm afaid i'm not too sure what you mean by this.

Thanks

scrupul0us

dont store the month by its name... store it by its value

e.g.
january is 1
february is 2

that way when u pull the date from the DB and u specify a sort order youll get the correct order due to the numeric value... then once u have it sorted data from the DB, when you output it to the screen you can use the date function to convert that numeric to its alpha equivalent

//FORMAT
//date("F",mktime(0,0,0,$month,$day,$year));

//TEST February 1st 2007
echo date("F",mktime(0,0,0,2,1,2007));

//WILL OUTPUT FEBRUARY

"F" forces the string to output the month only, but check the table here:
http://www.php.net/date

for other strings that can be used