Question

I’m trying to list out news using php and mysql based on the publish date and the time-stamp of the news article. I need all articles to list with the newest publish date and most recent time-stamp. I’m getting some irregularities in the listings when i attempt to accomplish this.

To note, some news articles could have a timestamp of today but a publish date of 10 from now.

SELECT * FROM table_news WHERE pubdate <= ".time()." ORDER BY pubdate,date DESC

SELECT * FROM table_news WHERE pubdate <= ".time()." ORDER BY date,pubdate DESC

SELECT * FROM table_news WHERE pubdate <= ".time()." ORDER BY pubdate,date ASC

SELECT * FROM table_news WHERE pubdate <= ".time()." ORDER BY date,pubdate ASC

None of these work…

I can list some of the results but i thought it might be a bit redundant. Let me know if you’d like to see them.

I’m either missing something obvious (long hours this week…) or there is a more creative approach to this.

Thanks for the help!

Answer 1

Is your pubdate field a unix timestmap (e.g. an integer field), or an actual mysql date/time field? time() returns a unix timestamp, not a date/time string. Use this instead:

SELECT *
FROM table_news
WHERE pubdate <= now()
ORDER BY pubdate DESC, date DESC

Note the DESC on both fields in the order by clause. unless you specify asc/desc explicitly on each field in an order-by clause, SQL specifies defaulting to ASC.