How To Auto Categorize In Php Blog

Creating a blog from scratch with PHP - Part 5 Sidebar, Categories and Archives

Blog Series

Part 1 - The Build
Part 2 - SEO URLS
Part 3 Comments with Disqus
Part 4 Categories
Part 5 Sidebar, Categories and Archives
Part 6 Pagination
Part 7 Tags
Part 8 Tags Sidebar

This tutorial is extending the Creating a blog from scratch with PHP with that in mind I will only be covering new pieces of code and not the whole codebase.

This part will cover adding categories to posts.

admin demo: http://www.dcblog.dev/demos/simpleblog-sidebar/admin

username: demo
password: demo

First the templates will need updating to be in 2 column the first column will be called main and the second will be called sidebar.

Open style/main.css and replace #wrapper with:

          #wrapper {     margin:auto;     width:960px; }  #main {     float:left;     width:640px;     margin-right:20px; }  #sidebar {     float:right;     width:300px; }

For all pages add the following structure:

          <div id='main'>      <!-- php code here -->  </div>  <div id='sidebar'>     <?php require('sidebar.php'); ?> </div>

Next create a new file called sidebar.php

Sidebar.php will contain all the sidebar content.

Latest Posts

To add a latest posts section loop through the posts table and set a limit for how many record to display

          <h1>Recent Posts</h1> <hr />  <ul> <?php $stmt = $db->query('SELECT postTitle, postSlug FROM blog_posts_seo ORDER BY postID DESC LIMIT 5'); while($row = $stmt->fetch()){     echo '<li><a href="'.$row['postSlug'].'">'.$row['postTitle'].'</a></li>'; } ?> </ul>

For categories it's the same as above query the cats table and loop through.

          <h1>Catgories</h1> <hr />  <ul> <?php $stmt = $db->query('SELECT catTitle, catSlug FROM blog_cats ORDER BY catID DESC'); while($row = $stmt->fetch()){     echo '<li><a href="c-'.$row['catSlug'].'">'.$row['catTitle'].'</a></li>'; } ?> </ul>

For archives loop through the posts table return the month and year for each month use a GROUP BY to merge identical results.

In the loop create a link in the href needs a custom slug creating that will be a- then the month then the year for instance: a-2-2014, a new rule will need to be added to the .htaccess file to point the link to archives.php

          <ul> <?php $stmt = $db->query("SELECT Month(postDate) as Month, Year(postDate) as Year FROM blog_posts_seo GROUP BY Month(postDate), Year(postDate) ORDER BY postDate DESC"); while($row = $stmt->fetch()){     $monthName = date("F", mktime(0, 0, 0, $row['Month'], 10));     $slug = 'a-'.$row['Month'].'-'.$row['Year'];     echo "<li><a href='$slug'>$monthName</a></li>"; } ?> </ul>

Next update .htaccess and add the following above on line 5

          RewriteRule ^a-(.*)-(.*)$ archives.php?month=$1&year=$2 [L]

This will point a-3-2014 to archives.php?month=3&year=2014

Next create a new file called archives.php

Copy the content of index.php to this file.
Replace the query this the following, this will collect the data from a $_GET request then display all posts that match the date range.

          //collect month and year data $month = $_GET['month']; $year = $_GET['year'];  //set from and to dates $from = date('Y-m-01 00:00:00', strtotime("$year-$month")); $to = date('Y-m-31 23:59:59', strtotime("$year-$month"));  $stmt = $db->prepare('SELECT postID, postTitle, postSlug, postDesc, postDate FROM blog_posts_seo WHERE postDate >= :from AND postDate <= :to ORDER BY postID DESC'); $stmt->execute(array(     ':from' => $from,     ':to' => $to ));

Upload the files, All done, the blog now has a sidebar with categories, latest posts and archives.

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