Question

I have events (datetime) in my MySQL database.
Days have 0, 1, or more events.

I want to show the upcoming 7 days, and below each day list the events happening that day (if any).

What would be the best practice to do so?

The easiest would be:

for(days) {
   for(mysql_query_get_events) {
      display_event
   }
}

but it would require to run the same big query for each day, and I believe this is very ineffective. How would you proceed?

Answer 1

Something along:

SELECT * FROM events
    WHERE event_date > NOW()
        AND event_date < DATE_ADD(NOW(), INTERVAL 7 DAYS)
    GROUP BY date
    ORDER BY date ASC;

This would select all events in the upcoming 7 days

Edit: Just grab all events, loop through the days and keep popping results off the stack. E.g:

events = sql_query()
days = range(now, now + 7 days)

for (day in days) {
    echo day
    while events[0].date = day {
        echo array_shift(events)
    }
}