PHP blog (iterating through array data) - php

Question

I'm not especially experienced in PHP, but I've been trying to create a basic blog for a friend's website. I thought the easiest thing to do for now would be to use static files, so I'm using XML to store the blog entries. I've managed to set it up perfectly in that I can display the posts as I want them. However, I now want a nav bar which will allow me to select posts based on date, as most blogs have. The files are simply named 1.xml, 2.xml, 3.xml etc. so I can iterate through them. Here's the code that shows how the data array is organised (it's an array within an array so that the first level will be equivalent to the number in the filename +1). So I'm having a lot of trouble working out how I can create the nav bar (ul, li etc.) from this data. Presumably I'd need years to be unique and then the months in the years to be unique and also with the days, then I can have each title (obviously a link) come under the proper date.
$data = array();
for ($i = 1; $i <= $numberOfPosts; $i++) {
$filename = './blogentries/' . $i . '.xml';
if (!file_exists($filename))
throw new Exception();
$blogentry = simplexml_load_file($filename);
$title = $blogentry->title;
$dateD = $blogentry->date->day;
$dateM = $blogentry->date->month;
$dateY = $blogentry->date->year;
if (strlen($dateY) === 2) $dateY = '20' . $dateY;
$entryParagraphs = $blogentry->entry->children();
$data[] = array(
(string)$title,
array(
(string)$dateY,
(string)$dateM,
(string)$dateD
),
$entryParagraphs
);
}
Thanks for any help you can give. And sorry if I've not been as eloquent as I might have been, I hope you'll forgive my relative ignorance!

Answer 1

From what I understand, I will go with this type of solution :
First of all, if you do know a little bit of OOP, please create an Article class.
After that, here is what I would do for what you are asking :
Instead of creating an array (which should in fact be a class, (the first array, I don't know if you do realize that), I would do this array :
$data[$dateY][$dateM][$dateD]=$blogentry;
Then, you have all your articles classified by Year, then month, then day, so it becomes really simple to end with your request.
edit :
When I said it should be a class, I'm talking about this array :
array(
(string)$title,
array(
(string)$dateY,
(string)$dateM,
(string)$dateD
),
$entryParagraphs
)
It's typically what a class is designed for.