How to sort year and month fields in same row from mysql table using php

Question

I have a mysql table with month and year fields as below.

    year        month       filename                    filepath
    2013        Feb         2013Feb_Report.xlsx         ./main_reports/2013Feb_Report.xlsx
    2013        Jan         2013Jan_Report.xlsx         ./main_reports/2013Jan_Report.xlsx
    2012        Jul         2012Jul_Report.xlsx         ./main_reports/2012Jul_Report.xlsx
    2013        Mar         2013Mar_Report.xlsx         ./main_reports/2013Mar_Report.xlsx
    2011        Mar         monthly report180413.xlsx   ./main_reports/monthly report180413.xlsx
    2012        Sep         2012Sep_Report.xlsx         ./main_reports/2012Sep_Report.xlsx
    2012        Oct         2012Oct_Report.xlsx         ./main_reports/2012Oct_Report.xlsx

I'm retrieving all fields from this table and prints it as below.

    2011 Mar  :  monthly report180413.xlsx
    2012 Sep  :  2012Sep_Report.xlsx
    2012 Oct  :  2012Oct_Report.xlsx
    2013 Jan  :  2013Jan_Report.xlsx

I want to retrieve this table by sorting both month and year fields in DESC order as below. How can I do this? Should I change the data type of the month and year fields? Please Help..

    2013 Jan  :  2013Jan_Report.xlsx
    2012 Oct  :  2012Oct_Report.xlsx
    2012 Sep  :  2012Sep_Report.xlsx
    2011 Mar  :  monthly report180413.xlsx

The sql query I have used is as below. It retrieves year and month in DESC order but the month is sorted in DESC order of alphabets ie, 'Jan' comes above 'Feb'. What I need is 'Feb' above 'Jan'..

 "SELECT * FROM main_reports ORDER BY year DESC, month DESC";

Any help please.. Thanks in advance..

Answer 1

Assuming you're using MySQL. Try using the handy ORDER BY FIELD option:

ORDER BY year DESC, FIELD( month, 'Dec', 'Nov', 'Oct', 'Sep', 'Aug', 'Jul', 'Jun', 'May', 'Apr', 'Mar', 'Feb', 'Jan' )

Answer 2

For sorting months in order, I always find it best to store them as an integer value, then output the text version via PHP

If you currently have months stored as Jan,Feb,Mar etc it will be impossible to order correctly with out converting first

Eg, convert all months in your database to Jan=1, Feb=2, Mar=3 etc, then you can use the SQL order by

ORDER BY year DESC,month DESC

then in your PHP you can output the text verion of the month with

$monthName = date("F", mktime(0, 0, 0, $monthNumber));
echo $monthName;

Answer 3

As pointed out somewhat by fullybaked, you are seriously misusing MySQL datatypes. Either use date or datetime columns for processing date-related data, or even better use an int(11) for storing UNIX timestamps for easy ordering/date range selection.

You could easily write a PHP/ASP script to convert your current table layout to a valid format.