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Display Next Upcoming Date of a School Session

TR Douglas 19 Jun 2012 02:46 question, complete

Newbie still figuring out how best to use LV. Can I use it to display the next upcoming date for a school that has 7 sessions each year?

For example, if I use the current time, I'd want to display the very first date that appears in the future.

The client needs to easily update the dates... so would I create a group for "School Sessions" and then create a separate variable for each date? If so, can I compare all the variables in a group to the current time?

Thanks!

Replies

Low 19 Jun 2012 09:12

If you're going to create a variable per date, you'd have to create a lot of conditionals to do the checking. Instead, I'd probably use Pixel & Tonic's Matrix as a single variable, and store each date in a row.

Then you could use a tag like this to get the correct date, using Matrix' handy parameters:
```
{exp:low_variables:pair 
   var="my_matrix_var" 
   search:my_date_col=">{current_time}" 
   limit="1" 
   orderby="my_date_col" 
   sort="asc"} 
     {my_date_col format="%d-%m-%Y"} 
 {/exp:low_variables:pair}
```
...untested, but something like that could work.
TR Douglas 20 Jun 2012 20:39

And indeed that does work... been testing a range of other vars today and starting to pick it up... many thanks!
TR Douglas 9 Sep 2012 15:57

Follow up on this question now: Can we use the output of a plugin inside the low_variables:pair?

We made a very basic plug-in to subtract 4 days from the current time.
```
class Shifter 
 { 
  public function buffer() 
  { 
   $today = date("Y-m-d"); 
   $buffer = strtotime($today ."-4 days"); 
   return $buffer; 
  } 
 } 
 
```
But we don't get the correct result when we replaced the current_time tag with the plug-in tag in the low_variables:pair.
```
search:session_date=">{exp:shifter:buffer}"   
 
```
Is this feasible? Thanks much!
Low 10 Sep 2012 05:50

As a rule, using a plugin tag as input for another tag's parameter will not work, due to parse order. You'd have to change the plugin to work as a tag pair and wrap it around the LV tag.
TR Douglas 10 Sep 2012 12:11

Ahh, OK, we'll work on that... thanks!