Show/Hide links though a custom CMS (using PHP)

[Dorza]

I’ve stumbled upon a problem which i just can't get my head around, after searching google and finding nothing that does exactly what i want i thought id asked the cleaver folks at hexus. My problem:

I have this:

navbar on each page of my website which can be edited from a custom CMS of mine. The CMS has a section/page called "menu manager" (MM for short). This page handles the editing, adding and deleting of menu items to the navbar. What I'd like to add to this section are links to my navbar items which will show/hide the affected links on the public side of the website ie on the navbar (above). Any one whos used mamboCMS may know what I’m on about. For example in the below picture of my MM page all the "Live" links are displayed on the site but if for example i clicked on "Live" the page would reload, "Live" would change to "hidden" and the affected link would be hidden from the main navbar:

Menu_Manager - CMS Page



I just can't get my head around idea of hiding something, which is still visible in the database (All the navbar items including where they link to are held in a database).

I’ve found some code which does a similar thing to what i want but they all use JavaScript which I don’t want to use. Id much rather use PHP if possible, plus as well the hide/show codes I’ve found don’t work if the client has JS turned off. If any one has any ideas or tutorials they know of I'd appreciate their input and or help.


EDIT: one more thing now that ive rememberd about it.....When i post a news item the date of posting is in the format yyyy-mm-dd, this date is pulled from a field in the database. How can i change it so that it reads like this: 31-Jul-05. ive tried messing around with various settings but nothing works. Do i need to change some sort of config file within Mysql or PHP?

[yamangman]

The link could move the stored menu bar data to another table, and move it back when you need it, simple.

[Iain]

Use the date() function in PHP to convert the date.

Best bet to hide the menu links is to cheat and apply a style sheet. So add a variable to the page where you want the link to hide e.g. on the page(s) which appear under Home put a variable in called

 $currentMenuOption = 'home';

Then modify the menu code to say

if ($currentMenuOption == $name)
{
echo '<div class="hideOption">Home</div>';
} else {
echo 'Home';
} 

and have an option in your style sheets of

.hideOption: display: hidden;

That way the style sheet will hide the menu option. Obviously you need to change $name to match whatever variable the code looks at and you may have to change the <div> to be a <td> or <li> depending on the HTML used to build the menu. They key thing is you won't be doing too much coding and you won't have to modify the database which makes upgrades to your CMS a lot easier

[Dorza]

Thanks for your help guys. Got the main problem sorted. I took your idea (Iain) a step further by adding a "shown" field to the database table with a type of Enum. I gave it values of 'Y','N' and told the If statement you provided above to look for N. If it finds N in the table then the link wont be displayed. This way i am able to edit the Y or N value with a tick box on the Edit page for each link. Thanks again.

I still havent sorted the date bit out though, my fault i didnt make things clear before in regards to that.....

On the table where my posted data is stored theres a field called "Date" with a field type of "Date" the default is set by auto to 0000-00-00. Then on the page i wish to display the date i do the following:

/*PHP START*/

//All the below is just an except of the fuller code.
//Ive only included whats relevent to displaying the date 
//of the posted data

$datalist = @mysql_query("SELECT date FROM content");
    
}

while ($data = mysql_fetch_array($datalist)) {

  $date = $data['date'];

  //Displays date:

  echo "<div class='post'>Posted on: $date by </div>";
}

/*PHP CLOSE*/ 

Im not sure how to do things using date()

[Iain]

www.php.net/date

[Dorza]

Thanks. That give me new words/ideas to use in google. I eventually found the solution to the date problem Here, should anyone have the same problem i had. Thanks for the help

[Iain]

if you're doing the conversion in the SQL query I recommend you don't for performance reason. Best to get the raw format from the database and deal with it in PHP, it's more flexible and more performant.

[Dorza]

I appreciate you pointing out a better solution most would have left it at the original solution so thanks.

After reading the php.net/date page and many other sites im still not 100% sure about what you mean or how to do it . When you say get the raw format is that what ive done in the code ive posted in my 2nd post? Do i need to use date_format() when im converting the date using PHP? Im still pretty new to PHP/MySql so theres a lot im not sure about.

[Iain]

get the date straight from the SQL query and then explode it out into its constituent parts, convert it to a timestamp and run the date function e.g.

$query = "SELECT date FROM content"; // query for date
$result = mysql_query($query);
// loop through results from query
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
// split SQL date into time and date
$parts = explode(' ',$row['date']);
// split time and date into their constituent parts, namely year, month, day, hour minute, second
$dateParts = explode('-',$parts[0]);
$timeParts = explode(':',$parts[1]);
// turn these parts into a UNIX timestamp i.e. number of seconds since January 1st 1970
$timestamp = mktime($timeParts[0],$timeParts[1],$timeParts[2],$dayParts[1],$dayParts[0],$dayParts[2]);
// format the timestamp into a nice textual date
$niceDate = date('l jS F, Y',$timestamp);
echo $niceDate;
} 

I've just written this here without testing it so there may be some bugs but give it a go. Your date will need to be in the datetime format in your database which I assume it is. One last thing, I advise you not to call your database fields any name which may represent a function e.g. date. Best to call it content_date or something more unique

[Dorza]

Thanks for typing that up. I put it into my page, but when i run it i get that error message saying windows cannot handle dates before midnight (00:00:00), January 1, 1970.

By the way my date field was of type "Date" I have since changed this to "DateTime". As for my field names they all begin with "cont_" followed by date for example. Im using the sitepoin (PHP/Mysql one) book so im following somthing similar to what they done in there.

[Iain]

What's the value of the date in the database then ?

[Dorza]

This is what the date field looks like when i go to edit it in phpMyadmin:

Field - contdate
Type - DateTime
Null - Not Null
Default** - 0000-00-00 00:00:00

All other attributes are emtpy. Do i need length/value filled in?

[Iain]

I mean what are the values of the rows in the database, if they are all set to 0000-00-00 00:00:00 then obviously you're not going to get a date as there isn't one so you need to put an if statement in to trap if the date is set to that.

[Dorza]

Ah right. This is whats entered when a new row is made (the date does change when the day changes): 2005-07-30 00:00:00 . None of the times have an entry for some reason.



UPDATE: Ive now sorted the problems i had with the date out. Changed the date field to int(10) generated a unix time with time() in the form that enters the data then converted the time to a useful one using

"$contdate = date("jS-M-y" ,$data['contdate']); 

" in the page i wish to display the date.