Question

I’m trying to setup an automatic event countdown. What I want to do is use MySQL to fill the countdown with the next upcoming event.

If the event is in the future, the code will show ‘upcoming event – countdown’ and if the event is currently taking place then show ‘event happening’.

I have a table structure like this:

CREATE TABLE jos_eventlist_events (
    id INT UNSIGNED PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT,
    catsid INT UNSIGNED,
    dates DATE,
    times TIME,
    enddates DATE,
    endtimes TIME,
    published TINYINT(1),
    title VARCHAR(255)
) Engine=InnoDB;

INSERT INTO jos_eventlist_events
  VALUES 
(1, 6, '2012-01-15', '21:00', '2012-01-15', '22:00', 1, 'Partying'),
(2, 6, '2012-01-15', '23:00', '2012-01-16', '01:00', 1, 'More partying')
;

So essentially, the query should do something akin to this: If there are no events currently taking place, retrieve the next upcoming event. If there is an event taking place then display it.

The following query is a stepping stone as to what I’m trying to achieve.

SELECT catsid,id,dates,times,endtimes,published,title 
  FROM jos_eventlist_events 
  WHERE catsid = 6 AND published = 1 
    AND dates && times >= CURDATE() && CURTIME() 
    AND dates && endtimes <= CURDATE() && CURTIME()
  LIMIT 1

Keep in mind that my server is 5 hours behind my local time.

I know I’m missing something really silly with this, but any help you can provide will be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

try (I did not test it):

SELECT catsid,id,dates,times,endtimes,published,title 
  FROM jos_eventlist_events 
  WHERE catsid = 6 AND published = 1
    AND (CONCAT(dates, ' ', times)>= NOW()  
         OR (     CONCAT(dates, ' ', times) < NOW() 
              AND CONCAT(enddates, ' ', endtimes) >= NOW() ) )
  ORDER BY CONCAT(dates, ' ', times)
  LIMIT 1