PHP Sorting by date?

Question

I'm making a news feed which stores dates as a string like Tuesday 05 June 2012 04:14:44 PM.

I want to do two things.

Sort the news feed by date (newest to oldest)
If the date is today's date, show only the time(which is also sorted).

which stores dates as a string what on earth makes people to do so? no, i'm realy interested, cause i can find no reason. — k102
– k102, Commented Jun 5, 2012 at 7:19
I had it sorted by date, but I couldn't figure out how to sort the time as well, at least not without a lot of embedded if and while statements etc. — user1436735
– user1436735, Commented Jun 5, 2012 at 7:24
You can store the news by id, or use strtotime(), you'll get numbers, the higher the numbers, the recent it is, you can also then convert it to string with the date() function, google is your friend :) — HamZa
– HamZa, Commented Jun 5, 2012 at 7:30

Gustav · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-05 07:28:38Z

3

I would change the storage to store some "unix timestamp". From that you can print out whatever format of date you like. And also, it's a number and is very easily sortable.

answered Jun 5, 2012 at 7:28

Gustav

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sephoy08 · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-05 09:09:14Z

0

I guess this will work for your problem, yet i advise you to modify your table design if possible.

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM newsfeed");

$records = array();
$i = 0;
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
    $records[$i] = array('news_idPK' => $row['news_idPK'],
                     'date' => date("Y-m-d H:i:s", strtotime($row['date'])),
                     'news' => $row['news']
    );
    $i++;
}
usort($records, "cmp");

function cmp($a, $b) {
    $a = strtotime($a['date']);
    $b = strtotime($b['date']);
    return $a - $b;
}

$ctr = count($records)-1;
for($x=$ctr; $x>=0; $x--)
{
    $newsDate = date("l d F Y h:i:s A", strtotime($records[$x]['date']));
    if(date("Y-m-d", strtotime($records[$x]['date'])) == date("Y-m-d"))
    {
        $newsDate = date("h:i:s A",strtotime($records[$x]['date']));
    }
    echo $records[$x]['news_idPK']." - ".$newsDate." - ".$records[$x]['news']." <br/>";
}

answered Jun 5, 2012 at 9:09

sephoy08

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2 Comments

Jérémie Parker Over a year ago

As they say it is strongly recommended that you use the mysqli extension instead

sephoy08 Over a year ago

.:oh yeah, sorry bout that.tnx! :)

nimrod · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-05 07:22:08Z

-2

This sorting method isn't effective. You can add an ID column and sort by ID. each time someone post a post , and it's inserted to the feed - a incremented ID will be inserted. it's parallel to date sorting - you want the newest.

it's the most recommended and effective sorting method.

answered Jun 5, 2012 at 7:22

nimrod

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2 Comments

user1436735 Over a year ago

I thought of that before, but I thought something wouldn't work with it. Thanks :)

k102 Over a year ago

hm... but why? i thought that storing date in special datetime field will solve all the problems. with ID - how can you select all for e.g. 'yesterdays' posts?

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