too long

Question

I just started with PHP and mySQL and I'm creating some kind of blog. At time I think it's going well - I just got some trouble with my archives code.

I think the solution will be pretty easy but I'm so blinded that I just can't find the point on my own.

This is my actual code and everything works fine, also the links:

$sql = mysql_query ("SELECT YEAR(date) AS get_year, MONTH(date) AS get_month, COUNT(*) AS entries FROM blogdata GROUP BY get_month ORDER BY date ASC") or die('No response from database.');


while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($sql)) {

$get_year = $row["get_year"];
$get_month = $row["get_month"];
$entries = $row["entries"];

    // get month name
$this_month = date( 'F', mktime(0, 0, 0, $row["get_month"]) );



echo '<dl>';
echo '<dt>Entries from &nbsp;'. $get_year . '</dt>';

echo '<dd><a href="archives.php?month='. $get_month .'">Entries from &nbsp;'. $this_month . '&nbsp;</a>(' . $entries . ')</dd>';

echo '</dl>';  

}

Ok. Then the result in the browser looks similar like this:

• Entries from 2012
  1. Entries from January (2)
• Entries from 2012
  1. Entries from February (1)

Now my question: How can I resume all months inside the year? Like this:

• Entries from 2012
  1. Entries from January (2)
  2. Entries from February (1)

I'm scared about creating a 12-months array cause maybe not every month there will be entries, and I don't want to show empty months.

Can someone help me? Thanks!!

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

Here I am again to show the final (working!!) result of your friendly help:

At least, I used Sam's version cause it was just for what i was looking for. I really appreciate the other answers - specially 'cause now I have more stuff to think about for the next tries.

Sam's code worked just awesome... the only trouble I had was, that after using the array, it only printed out 'December' as months.

So I looked over again the code and after 2 hours of seek and try, I found the point of trouble. It was nested in the following line:

$this_month = date( 'F', mktime(0, 0, 0, $row['get_month']) );

Changing it (It's logic, but for me as greenhorn it toke me a while) to:

$this_month = date( 'F', mktime(0, 0, 0, $month['get_month']) );

Now everything work fine. Just how I expected. So this is the working final code:

    $sql = mysql_query ("SELECT YEAR(date) AS get_year, MONTH(date) AS get_month, COUNT(*) AS entries FROM blogdata GROUP BY get_year, get_month ORDER BY date ASC") or die('No response from database.');


    $entries = array();
    while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($sql)) {
    $entries[$row['get_year']][] = $row;
}

    foreach($entries as $year => $months) {
  echo '<dl>';
  echo '<dt>Entries from &nbsp;'. $year . '</dt>';


    foreach($months as $month) {
    $this_month = date( 'F', mktime(0, 0, 0, $month['get_month']) );

  echo '<dd><a href="archives.php?month='. $month['get_month'] .'">Entries from &nbsp;'. $this_month . '&nbsp;</a>(' . $month['entries'] . ')</dd>';

  }

  echo '</dl>';


}

Thanks to all again!

Answer 1

I find the simplest way is something along these lines:

$entries = array();
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($sql)) {
  $entries[$row['get_year']][] = $row;
}

foreach($entries as $year => $months) {
  echo '<dl>';
  echo '<dt>Entries from &nbsp;'. $year . '</dt>';

  echo '<dd>';
  foreach($months as $month) {\
    $this_month = date( 'F', mktime(0, 0, 0, $row["get_month"]) );

    echo '<a href="archives.php?month='. $month['get_month'] .'">Entries from &nbsp;'. $this_month . '&nbsp;</a>(' . $month['entries'] . ')';
  }
  echo '</dd></dl>';


}

That HTML markup isn't ideal, but you should get the idea.