How to Display Latest Entry In MysQL Table

[atkinsonsits]

Hi

I am attempting to build my own cms (although very basic) using php and mysql. Instead of having a static homepage, I want the content displayed to be dynamic. In other words, I want the homepage to be flexible/changeable based on whatever the latest 'content' entry into the database is.

I currently have two tables: 'user', and 'homepage'.

My homepage table is structured as follows:

home_id (int)
user_id (index, fk)
title_cont (varchar)
home_cont  (varchar)
home_date (timestamp)

I want to be able to display the latest 'title_cont', and the 'latest home_cont' entry. I am assuming that the date of when an entry is made is going to be useful in order to achieve this, so have included it in the table using a timestamp type.

Here is what I think a solution may be:

<?
$sql = "SELECT * FROM home ORDER BY home_date DESC LIMIT 1";
$display = $db->Execute( $sql );
?>

Then to display on my homepage:

<h2><?=$display->fields['title_cont']?></h2>
<p><?=$display->fields['home_cont']?>

Is this correct? Or is there a better way? Also, should I be using timestamp or datetime?

Thanks

[pritaeas]

Is this correct?

Yes.

The useful part of datetime over a timestamp is that you can use the MySQL date functions.

[atkinsonsits]

Thanks - would you recommend using datetime over timestamp in this case then? I only need it to sort the latest entry, so that php knows which entry to display.

Does the code look ok? I was going to use:

<?php
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($sql)) {
echo "<h1>".$row{'title_cont'}."</h1>" "<p>".$row{'home_cont'}."</p>";
}
?>

But then I cam across the other approach - which looks a little unusual to me i.e

<?=$display->fields['value']?>

...I'm not familiar with using "<?=" instead of "echo" or "print". Is it an OO approach?
Try as I have done to pick up OO PHP, I have found it impossible to learn on my own (without having £££ to spend on Zend Training etc) so I have reverted to traditional methods...

Thanks

[Will Gresham]

The benefit of using DateTime is that you can perform actions on the data in the query, MySQL has a host of functions that will work on DateTime fields.
If you really need the date as a Unix timestamp, then there is a MySQL function to convert DateTime to a timestamp, and also PHP has a function that will do the same.

As for <?=, it is simply shorthand for <?php echo.... It should not be used on projects that will, or could, be deployed on unknown configurations, as it requires the PHP short tags option to be enabled.

[Icone]

Use the select top 1 query statement. Here! and order it by ID, set to asc if you want the first row and desc if last row.