[SOLVED] Filter News by date (month/year, etc)

[stopsatgreen]

I want to have a series of pages which will display only News Articles from a defined date period (monthly). I've seen there's a patch for the News module floating around but I don't really want to patch my site as it could break in future upgrades.

I came up with a solution that would display Articles based on the page creation date:

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{capture assign='newsletter_date'}{created_date}{/capture}
{foreach from=$items item=entry}
{if $entry->postdate|date_format:'%m' == $newsletter_date|date_format:'%m'}
<!-- Content -->
{/foreach}

But this is dependent on the page being created in the month you want to display; not ideal.

I think I'd have to create a UDT which would display Articles based on an input value (perhaps from a Content Block), but I don't really know where to begin. Can anyone help me out?

[cyberman]

Why don't create a category/subcegory for the News-Articles and display it with a category parameter?

[stopsatgreen]

Because there are already five possible subcategories for each Article, so I'd have to create five new subcategories every month.

I'm getting a bit closer to where I want to be; I've created a UDT which takes a string and returns it as a date:

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$input_date = $params['thismonth'];
echo date('d F Y',strtotime($input_date));

Which I can then input into my News template and filter by month:

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{capture assign='item_date'}{newsletter_date thismonth='June 2008'}{/capture}
{foreach from=$items item=entry}
{if $entry->postdate|date_format:'%m' == $item_date|date_format:'%m'}
<!-- Content -->
{/if}
{/foreach}

What I need now is a way to get the contents of a Content Block as a string and either pass it into the UDT instead of the parameter, or pass it into the News template as a parameter; neither of which I can work out how to do.

Also, with a lot of news stories on each page I feel that this could mean a lot of database queries. Could anyone suggest:

a) A way to pass the Content Block value to the UDT; or
b) A more elegant solution.

[cyberman]

a) A way to pass the Content Block value to the UDT; or

Have you tried this?

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{content block='date' assign='item_date'}

A new variable $item_date is available in Smarty and can be read by udt

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$myVar = $smarty->get_template_vars('item_date');

[stopsatgreen]

OK, so this is my UDT, called 'newsletter_date':

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global $gCms;
$smarty = &$gCms->GetSmarty();
$myVar = $smarty->get_template_vars('item_date');
echo date('d F Y',strtotime($myVar));

In my template I have this:

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{content block='Date' oneline='true' assign='item_date'}

In my page I have the value 'June 2008' in the Date block.

When I call {newsletter_date} in the News template, it returns 01 January 1970. What have I missed?

[cyberman]

echo date('d F Y',strtotime($myVar));

In my page I have the value 'June 2008' in the Date block.

Think PHP does not know how to format this ...

A better option for content block could be

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{content block='Date' oneline='true' wysiwyg='false' assign='item_date'}

So there will be no html tags or similar inside.

[stopsatgreen]

Think PHP does not know how to format this

It does; when I pass it as a variable in the UDT:

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{newletter_date thismonth='June 2008'}

I get the result I want. But that means creating a new News template every month, so what I need to do is pass the same value from the content block. I think I'm really close, I just want to know why my UDT isn't getting the value from the block:

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global $gCms;
$smarty = &$gCms->GetSmarty();
$myVar = $smarty->get_template_vars('item_date');
echo date('d F Y',strtotime($myVar));

Is there something missing or wrong?

[blast2007]

I've seen there's a patch for the News module floating around but I don't really want to patch my site as it could break in future upgrades.

I can't understand why[url=http://'http://forum.cmsmadesimple.org/index.php/topic,20711.msg102501.html#msg102501']most asked, working[/url], and [url=http://'http://dev.cmsmadesimple.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=2175&group_id=8&atid=111']ready to apply patches[/url] are simply ignored by developers in new release ...

This is frustrating for contributors

Regards
blast

[cyberman]

Maybe you should join the project  ...

[stopsatgreen]

Right now I don't really care whether the core is patched or not because it doesn't help me; I want to know if there's something wrong with my UDT which is stopping it from getting the variable from the content block:

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global $gCms;
$smarty = &$gCms->GetSmarty();
$myVar = $smarty->get_template_vars('item_date');
echo date('d F Y',strtotime($myVar));

The issue is not with the date format, because when I do this:

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global $gCms;
$smarty = &$gCms->GetSmarty();
$myVar = $smarty->get_template_vars('item_date');
echo $myVar;

I get no output. Therefore, the UDT isn't getting the value from the content block. So what am I doing wrong?

[stopsatgreen]

Just giving this a bump, as I'd really appreciate a solution.

[cyberman]

This works for me

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global $gCms;
$myVar = $smarty->get_template_vars('item_date');
echo $myVar;

But the problem is where you've called the second content block.

If it should be available in complete template (head and body section) I suggest to insert the call for the second block as the first line of template.

[stopsatgreen]

That seems to have done the trick! Moving the {content block='name'} up to the top of the page resolved the issue. Not sure why that should be, but I'm not complaining!

Many thanks for your patience and help on this. When I get a chance, I'll look at adding it to the Wiki somewhere.