• From: Caracas, Venezuela
  • Registered: 2009-01-01
  • Posts: 97

Topic: PHP display only future dates

Hello,

I know it's possible to display records ordered by date, but what if I want to display only future dates counting from the present day? PHP should first calculate the present date and then display dates from there. How do I do that? With a conditional statement? is there a function for that?

Example:
I have these records stored in my DB:

record1 2009/10/02
record2 2009/10/05
record3 2009/10/08
record4 2009/10/18
record5 2009/11/04
record6 2009/11/10
record7 2009/12/07

If the present day is 2009/10/17 I just want to display:

record4 2009/10/18
record5 2009/11/04
record6 2009/11/10
record7 2009/12/07


but If the present day is 2009/11/01 I just want to display:

record5 2009/11/04
record6 2009/11/10
record7 2009/12/07



Any help will be appreciated,

Regards,

Eduardo

  • Gender: Male
  • From: Chico/Sacramento, CA
  • Registered: 2008-12-19
  • Posts: 2,343

Re: PHP display only future dates

Here's a quick sample that's been tested and works for me...

Database (very basic, just includes two fields -- a unique id and a "date" field with 00-00-00 00:00:00 format)

-- phpMyAdmin SQL Dump
-- version 3.2.0.1
-- http://www.phpmyadmin.net
--
-- Host: localhost
-- Generation Time: Nov 03, 2009 at 10:18 PM
-- Server version: 5.1.37
-- PHP Version: 5.2.11

SET SQL_MODE="NO_AUTO_VALUE_ON_ZERO";

--
-- Database: `test`
--

-- --------------------------------------------------------

--
-- Table structure for table `test`
--

CREATE TABLE `test` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `date` date NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM  DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=6 ;

--
-- Dumping data for table `test`
--

INSERT INTO `test` VALUES(1, '2009-11-04');
INSERT INTO `test` VALUES(2, '2009-11-28');
INSERT INTO `test` VALUES(3, '2009-11-02');
INSERT INTO `test` VALUES(4, '2009-11-05');
INSERT INTO `test` VALUES(5, '2009-11-25');

The PHP:

<?php

// Database Variables
$server = 'localhost';
$user = 'root';
$pass = 'root';
$db = 'test';

// Connect to Database
$connection = mysql_connect($server, $user, $pass) 
    or die ("Could not connect to server ... \n" . mysql_error ());
mysql_select_db($db) 
    or die ("Could not connect to database ... \n" . mysql_error ());
    
// show dates larger than current date    
$currentdate = date("Y-m-d H:i:s", time());
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM test WHERE date > '$currentdate' ORDER BY date")
    or die ("error!");

while($row = mysql_fetch_array( $result )) {
    // Print out the contents of each row
    echo $row['date'] . "<br/>";
} 


?>
  • From: Caracas, Venezuela
  • Registered: 2009-01-01
  • Posts: 97

Re: PHP display only future dates

Hello,

Thanks for your answer. I'll give it a try. Meanwhile I came up with this:

<?php do { ?>
  <div>
    
    <?php

$exp_date = $row_Recordset1['date']; 
$todays_date = date("Y-m-d"); 
$today = strtotime($todays_date); 
$expiration_date = strtotime($exp_date); 
    if ($expiration_date > $today) 
        {   
            echo $row_Recordset1['date']; 

}


?>

It works perfectly. The only thing to do now is to show only the  first 3 records of that selection: let's say I have 20 records in total. Events from 1 to 7 are "past" events. Events from 8 to 20 are "upcoming" events. With my code, php will display only records 8 to 20. Now I just need to display only the first 3 records of those upcoming events:
8
9
10

Fot that, I was thinking about adding and extra condition with a counter, something like:


$counter=0;


if (($expiration_date > $today) ) && ($counter <4)) {   

            echo $row_Recordset1['date'];
                       $counter=$counter+1;
}

What do you think?

I'll try that later on my page.

Thanks

Eduardo

  • From: Caracas, Venezuela
  • Registered: 2009-01-01
  • Posts: 97

Re: PHP display only future dates

Well, after many tests, I found it!

You can see it here:

http://ww w.germanmarcano.com/indexEnglish.php

compare it to

http://ww w.germanmarcano.com/eventos/indexEnglish.php

On the second link you can see the list of full events. On the other hand, on the first link, the "upcoming events" section is only displaying the first 3 events, counting from the present date...

Here is the code (just the important part):

<?php 
          
          $counter=0;
          
          do { 
          
          $exp_date = $row_RsEventos['fecha']; 
          $todays_date = date("Y-m-d"); 
          $today = strtotime($todays_date); 
                 $expiration_date = strtotime($exp_date); 
          
          if (($expiration_date > $today) && ($counter<3) ){
          
?>

              <div class="AccordionPanel">
              <div class="AccordionPanelTab"><?php echo $row_RsEventos['titulo']; ?></div>
              <div class="AccordionPanelContent">
               
                   <table class="tablaeventosinicio">
                   <colgroup>
                     <col class="coleventos1" />
                     <col class="coleventos2" />
                    </colgroup>
                   <tr>
                     <td class="negrita">Date:</td>
                        <td><?php echo $row_RsEventos['fecha']; ?></td>
                    </tr>
                   <tr>
                     <td class="negrita">Place:</td>
                        <td><?php echo $row_RsEventos['lugar']; ?></td>
                    </tr>
                   <tr>
                     <td class="negrita">Time:</td>
                        <td><?php echo $row_RsEventos['hora'];
                        $counter++; ?></td>
                    </tr>
                 </table>
                <a href="eventos/indexEnglish.php">Details...</a></div>
            </div>
<?php 
            
            }
            
            
     } 
            
            
    while ($row_RsEventos = mysql_fetch_assoc($RsEventos)); 
?>

Now I just need to convert the yyyy-mm-dd format into a more friendly mm-dd-yyyy one.



Cheers,

Eduardo

Last edited by edoplaza (2009-11-04 22:38:09)

  • Gender: Male
  • From: Chico/Sacramento, CA
  • Registered: 2008-12-19
  • Posts: 2,343

Re: PHP display only future dates

Your sample works, but I wouldn't say it is very efficient. The less lines of code you are using, the more straight-forward the logic (in general, at least) and hopefully the easier to update. You've done with a lot of lines what I can do with (basically) two lines:

$currentdate = date("Y-m-d H:i:s", time());
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM test WHERE date > '$currentdate' ORDER BY date LIMIT 3")

Obviously, that doesn't actually display the dates... you'll need to loop through using "while($row = mysql_fetch_array( $result ))" but with one SQL statement, I only get three results from the database that are in the future. Use the SQL statement to do the heavy lifting for you -- there's really no need to mess with counters and if statements if you can do it using SQL.

  • From: Caracas, Venezuela
  • Registered: 2009-01-01
  • Posts: 97

Re: PHP display only future dates

Hi again.

Yes I know. But in my case, efficience will come after learning. I'm just a beginner in PHP smile. I'll try to to adapt what you suggest into my code.

Thanks!

Eduardo