sort directory listing by month with php

On LIne 17, don't you mean sort instead of $sort?

Ray, Thanks.

Not even that complicated.  Just

2006
    [link to January/]
    [link to February/]
    [link to March/]]
    etc...

not specifying index.html, index.php, default.html.  

Read the current directory and output a list a list of sub-directories as links.

I'm stuck on sorting the list of links as one would a human, January being the first link on the list, February being the second link on the list.  

I could use a work-around, adding characters (a_, b_, _c) to the beginning of the directory names or carefully create the January, February, etc. directories so I could use the creation date / modification date to sort the list, those will break in the environment where this will be used, and both seem anti-php.

Thanks, Hugh

Hugh, why do you need to read the directories at all?  Why not just list the links in the correct month order?

Jagarm:

Poor choice of variable name.  What's there actually works.  I'll change it, thank you for pointing that out.

Thanks, Hugh

Here is a function similar to sort except it sorts is by month, and this is what you looking for

Usa

function array_sort_by_month(&$values){
    $search_strings = array("January","February","March","April","May","June","July","August","September","October","November","December");
    $replace_string = array('0','1','3','4','5','6','7','8','9','10','11','12');
    $sort_key = array_map('ucfirst', $values);
    $sort_key = str_replace($search_strings, $replace_string, $sort_key);
    array_multisort($sort_key, SORT_ASC, SORT_STRING, $values);
}
 
//usage:
 
$month = array("April","February","January","June","March","May","AA");
 
array_sort_by_month($month)
 
//output
 
Array
(
    [0] => January
    [1] => February
    [2] => March
    [3] => April
    [4] => May
    [5] => June
    [6] => AA
)
                                              

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Ray-

I'm trying for bullet-proof.  If it has to get moved to another server, it won't break, when there's additions, changes, the additions, changes will be automatically show up on the site, otherwise there's a good chance the navigation won't get updated.

Sometimes the list of links be will be in a table, sometimes in a list.  Good chance that at some times the style will vary.

Thanks.

Hugh

I may still be missing some of your strategy.  A table or list is not the same as a directory scan.  We are probably not going to add any months to the calendar ;-)

Can you please explain a little more?  Thanks, ..

If you do not wish to use the function above, and want to rename your folders as a_January, b_february and so on, you could print or store it as follow:

$month = "a_January";

echo substr($month,strpos($month,"_")+1);

Jagarm:

I can sort an array by an arbitrary value, I can print out a list of the files into an array, I can make nice names so it all passes for navigation.  I can't put them together.  I'm like one of those guys begging for regex help, frustration level gets pretty high, I've been looking at code and tutorials all day, but I remembered I'd joined this site a couple of weeks ago and thought I could get a hand.

Thanks,  Hugh

I've set up some test directories and this seems to work.  
http://www.laprbass.com/RAY_MONTHS/RAY_monthly_directories.php

I have to leave now, but the code is in the snippet.  Hope that helps, ~Ray

<?php // RAY_MONTHS/RAY_monthly_directories.php
 
// FIND ALL THE YEARLY DIRECTORIES BELOW THIS DIRECTORY
// PRODUCE MONTH LINKS FOR EACH MONTH THAT HAS DATA
 
error_reporting(E_ALL);
 
// THE MONTHS
$months = array('January', 'February', 'March',
                'April',   'May',      'June',
                'July',    'August',   'September',
                'October', 'November', 'December'
                );
 
// WHAT IS MY DIRECTORY?
// http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.getcwd.php
$my_dir = getcwd();
 
// FIND THE CONTENTS OF MY DIRECTORY
// http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.scandir.php
$dirs = scandir($my_dir);
// var_dump($dirs);
 
// ISOLATE THE YEARS
$years  = array();
foreach ($dirs as $thing)
{
    if (!ereg("[0-9{4}]", $thing)) continue; // 4-DIGIT NUMERIC STRINGS ARE YEARS
    $years[] = $thing;
}
// var_dump($years);
 
// NOT NECESSARY - DEPENDS ON scandir() FOR ORDER
// sort($years);
 
foreach ($years as $year)
{
    echo "<br/><br/>$year\n";
    foreach ($months as $month)
    {
        $year_month = $year . '/' . $month;
// IF THIS IS A MONTH DIRECTORY - http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.is-dir.php
        if (is_dir($year_month))
// SEE ALSO THE NOTE HERE: http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.is-dir.php#85428     
        {
            echo "<br />&nbsp; &nbsp;<a href=\"$year_month\">$month</a>\n";
        }
        else
        {
            echo "<br />&nbsp; &nbsp;$month\n";
        }
    }
}
                                              

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Jagarm:

I can't depend on anyone being careful enough to name "March" as "c_March" next year.  Sooner or later "e_May_2004" going to get renamed as "May_2004".  I could carefully create the directory structure (make directory "January_2004" first, and "February_2004" after a second so I could use file dates to sort the lists but that's not sound.

Thanks, Hugh