Question

I have a calendar script that uses a database – I am needing it so it can cross dates (Floating Events) e.g an event starts on a Friday and ends on Sunday and will highlight the dates it covers. I have searched high and low to no avail.

Here is my datebase structure:

    id
    event 
    day
    month
    year
    category
    start
    finish
    location

Here is a row from the database (in same order as above):

    1
    British Red Cross Practical First Aid
    10
    3
    2012
    3
    09:00
    16:00
    Dundee, venue to be confirmed

Here is my current PHP:

<?php 
    $timestamp = mktime(0,0,0,$cMonth,1,$cYear);
    $maxday = date("t",$timestamp);
    $thismonth = getdate($timestamp);
    $startday = $thismonth['wday'] + 6;
    for ($i=0; $i<($maxday+$startday); $i++) {
        if(($i % 7) == 0 ) echo "<tr>\n";
        if($i < $startday) echo "<td></td>\n";
        else{
            $sql = "SELECT * FROM events WHERE day='".($i - $startday + 1)."' AND month='".$cMonth."' AND year='".$cYear."'";
            $query = mysql_query($sql);
            if (mysql_num_rows($query) > 0){
                echo "<td valign='top' height='80px'><div class='date' align='right'>".($i - $startday + 1)."</div>";
                while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($query)){
                    if ($row['category'] == "1"){
                        echo "<div style='background:#7F9AA4; margin-bottom: 2px; color: white; width: 98px;'>".$row['event']."</div>";
                    }elseif ($row['category'] == "2"){
                        echo "<div style='background:#9C8CAB; margin-bottom: 2px; color: white; width: 98px;'>".$row['event']."</div>";
                    }elseif ($row['category'] == "3"){
                        echo "<div style='background:#CABB16; margin-bottom: 2px; color: white; width: 98px;'>".$row['event']."</div>";
                    }elseif ($row['category'] == "4"){
                        echo "<div style='background:#86A20B; margin-bottom: 2px; color: white; width: 98px;'>".$row['event']."</div>";
                    }elseif ($row['category'] == "5"){
                        echo "<div style='background:#6E4C8C; margin-bottom: 2px; color: white; width: 98px;'>".$row['event']."</div>";
                    }
                }
                echo "</td>\n";
            }else echo "<td valign='top' height='80px'><div class='date' align='right'>". ($i - $startday + 1) ."</div></td>\n";
        }
        if(($i % 7) == 6 ) echo "</tr>\n";
    }
?>

Answer 1

1) You need someway of specifying that an event spans more than 1 date.
eg: spans: int

2) change your search so that you include span date (ie where day between startday and startday+span-1). You could iterate through the query and put each row into an array of arrays, one for each day of the month; duplicating the ones that span more than one day.

3) another way to produce your calendar is to search the whole month at once, and use PHP to chop it up, instead of SQL:
(notice, I cleaned up your PHP/SQL. you don’t need to drop out of strings, and if the columns day, month and year are ints, you don’t need to quote them)

$sql = "SELECT * FROM events WHERE month=$cMonth AND year=$cYear ORDER BY day";
$query = mysql_query($sql);
$cday = 90;
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($query))
{
    $day = $row['day'];
    if ($day != $cday)
    {
        // I'll leave as an exercise how figure out how to output day in particular slot

        $day = $cday;
    }
}

4) in the above, if you want to consider the span, you could, for instance :

$prev_month = ???; $prev_year= ???; $prev_month_days= ???;
 $sql = "SELECT * FROM events 
           WHERE (month=$cMonth AND year=$cYear) 
               OR ( month= $prev_month and year=$prev_year and day>($prev_month_days - span) )
           ORDER BY day";

have fun.