Organizing Lists

Sure... very simply put....

<?php foreach ($agendasRecords as $record): ?>

<p><a href="<?php echo $record['_link'] ?>"><?php echo $record['title'] ?> <?php echo $record['month_day'] ?> <?php echo $record['year'] ?></a></p><?php endforeach ?>

here's the page that displays the results.
http://www.pequannock.org/district/board-of-education/agendas2010.php

Hi jtedescojam,

So you're using two textfields (month_day and year) instead of a date field? In your above example, month_day contains "January 11th", "January 25th," and "February 2nd"?

If that's the case, you can extract the month out of your month_day field and output headers whenever the month name changes, like this:

<?php $currentMonth = ""; ?>
<?php foreach ($agendasRecords as $record): ?>

<?php $words = explode(" ", $record['month_day']); ?>
<?php $monthNameInCaps = strtoupper(@$words[0]); ?>
<?php ?>
<?php if ($monthNameInCaps != $currentMonth): ?>
<?php $currentMonth = $monthNameInCaps; ?>
<p><b><?php echo $currentMonth; ?></b></p>
<?php endif; ?>

<?php ?>
<p><a href="<?php echo $record['_link'] ?>"><?php echo $record['title'] ?> <?php echo $record['month_day'] ?> <?php echo $record['year'] ?></a></p>

<?php endforeach; ?>

I hope this helps! Please let me know if you have any questions.

yeah that's more than perfect.. nicely done. I didn't use the 'Date field' because I couldn't figure out how to filter results from 2009 and 2010 on the page. I originally started that way, but I couldn't figure it out.

here's the result: http://www.pequannock.org/district/board-of-education/agendas20102.php

Would you be able to write in next to each line what they mean? I'd like to try to decipher it so I can use it in other contexts, but i don't understand $currenMonth, $words, explode, etc... I see there's some extra code in there because I included the 'day' in the month_day field.. so I'm not sure how I could use this in order contexts.

thanks again.

Hi jtedescojam,

You can do this with a date field by supplying a "where" clause like: "YEAR(date) = 2010". Or, if you want the year supplied by the visitor: "YEAR(date) = '".mysql_escape($_REQUEST['year'])."'".

Here are some line numbers for reference:

[01] <?php $currentMonth = ""; ?>
[02] <?php foreach ($agendasRecords as $record): ?>
[03]
[04] <?php $words = explode(" ", $record['month_day']); ?>
[05] <?php $monthNameInCaps = strtoupper(@$words[0]); ?>
[06] <?php ?>
[07] <?php if ($monthNameInCaps != $currentMonth): ?>
[08] <?php $currentMonth = $monthNameInCaps; ?>
[09] <p><b><?php echo $currentMonth; ?></b></p>
[10] <?php endif; ?>
[11]
[12] <?php ?>
[13] <p><a href="<?php echo $record['_link'] ?>"><?php echo $record['title'] ?> <?php echo $record['month_day'] ?> <?php echo $record['year'] ?></a></p>
[14]
[15] <?php endforeach; ?>


[04] "explode" is PHP's "split", splitting on a space, we create a list ($words) of "January", "11th". Then we convert the first item in that list (the month) into all caps. [05]

[01] $currentMonth represents the last month which we wrote a header for. When the script starts, it's set to "". For every record, we check [07] if the record's month (in all caps) is the same as the last header we wrote. If it isn't, we output a header [09] and remember which header was output last [08].

This approach relies very much on your records being in order. ;)

I hope this helps! :)

Okay so you sold me on the "Date" field instead... so I've changed it to use the 'date' field now. Can you re-write the code accordingly? sorry.

this is what I have now.

<?php foreach ($agendasRecords as $record): ?>
<p><a href="<?php echo $record['_link'] ?>"><?php echo $record['title'] ?><br /><span class="agendadate"><?php echo date("D, M jS, Y g:i:s a", strtotime($record['date'])) ?></span></a></p><?php endforeach; ?>

Hi jtedescojam,

Sure thing, all you need to do is replace these two lines:

<?php $words = explode(" ", $record['month_day']); ?>
<?php $monthNameInCaps = strtoupper(@$words[0]); ?>

with this:

<?php $monthNameInCaps = strtoupper(date('F', strtotime($record['date']))); ?>

Perfect.

While I'm at it... I'm trying to do something similar inside of Policies page... but instead of a month header to break up different months, I need a Policy title to break up different sets of policies... so right now I have a drop down to select which category of policies (10 options), then on the page I have 10 sets of viewer code, each with it's own specific filter... and 10 of these...

<p class="policyheader">0000 - Bylaws</p>
<?php foreach ($policies0000Records as $record): ?>
<p><?php foreach ($record['document'] as $upload): ?><a href="<?php echo $upload['urlPath'] ?>"><?php echo $record['policy_number'] ?> - <?php echo $record['policy_title'] ?></a><?php endforeach ?></p><?php endforeach ?>

<p class="policyheader">1000 - Administration</p>
<?php foreach ($policies1000Records as $record): ?>
<p><?php foreach ($record['document'] as $upload): ?><a href="<?php echo $upload['urlPath'] ?>"><?php echo $record['policy_number'] ?> - <?php echo $record['policy_title'] ?></a><?php endforeach ?></p><?php endforeach ?>
<?php if (!$policies1000Records): ?>
<p>Please be patient while we re-structure this section.</p>
<?php endif ?>

And so on.... if you can do this today, excellent! otherwise.. have a great weekend and thanks for assistance thus far.

http://www.pequannock.org/district/board-of-education/policies.php

Hi jtedescojam,

Can you please post the top of that file? I'd need to know which field you're filtering on.