Next Month >> Last Month

[Anon]

Hi

I'm working on a content management system. One of the features I've been working on is implementing an editing feature which when you load the page by default shows the news items for the current month but with links to go back a month and forward a month

The problem comes in this..

I have this code

if ((!$m) || (!$y))
{
$m = date("m",mktime());
$y = date("Y",mktime());

}

$query = "SELECT id, section_id, headline, url, date_format(date,'%a %D %M %Y @ %H:%i%p'), body FROM sections_news WHERE date_format(date, '%m') = '$m' AND date_format(date, '%Y') = '$y' ORDER BY date DESC";

$format_m = sprintf( "%02d", $m);
Print ("$format_m $y<BR>");
?>

<BR>
<A HREF="<?=$SCRIPT_NAME?>?m=<?=(($m-1)<1) ? 12 : $m-1 ?>&y=<?=(($m-1)<1) ? $y-1 : $y ?>"><< Prev</A> ---

<A HREF="<?=$SCRIPT_NAME?>?m=<?=(($m+1)>12) ? 1 : $m+1 ?>&y=<?=(($m+1)>12) ? $y+1 : $y ?>">Next >></A>

When it comes to doing the links in the last part my code takes 1 or adds one to the month. Only, it makes for example 07 into 7 (thus buggering up the mysql query. I'm looking for perhaps a better way of doing prev and next (or at least a way of validating the numbers.

I have tried $format_m = sprintf( "%02d", $m); which does work but once inside the <A HREF= it doesn't work.

Thanks

MD

[Anon]

MD,

Seems to me you need to generate back links based on current month. Well...

How about this.

$date=date("Y-m") //it will give you 2001-08

if you'd like to go a month back, do this

$date=explode("-", $date);
$date[0] is current year
$date[1] is current month.

to go one month back is $date[1]-1; right?

Of course, incorporate conditional to address 12 months issue

if($date[1]=="1") //January
{
$year=$date[0]-1;
$month=12;
}

Going forward would be
if($date[1]=="12") //December
{
$year=$date[0]+1;
$month=1;
}

Hope that helps,

Di

[dannys]

IMO it's better to store the dates in timestamp forrmat - you can then add or remove any amount of time very easily and PHP has some good functions when it comes to producing human readable dates again.

Just my 2p 🙂

[Anon]

Danny,

That's true - you get more precise timing, and indeed php functions are terrific, but if you want to view entries for a month, why not use simple solution?

I'd think usage of timestamps is great when you deal with sites that report financial information, ticket reservations, etc. Systems like these are highly time dependant, but if you want to split data by months simple mathematical manipulations are best that way - it takes only a few lines of code, and you can address any issue that can come up - leap years, changing years, etc.

Di