Custom post type yearly/ monthly archive - sql

Question

I have a custom post type "news" in my Wordpress site. I am using Advanced Custom Fields plugin to add meta data to each post.
I want to create an array of news items as an archive:
[2013]
[January] => 5
[2012]
[January] => 20
[February] => 10
[2011]
[April] => 30
I managed to get this working using:
global $wpdb;
$news = $wpdb->get_results(
"SELECT wp_posts.post_date, COUNT(wp_posts.ID) as count
FROM $wpdb->posts
WHERE
wp_posts.post_type = 'news' AND
wp_posts.post_status = 'publish' AND
wp_posts.post_date <= CURDATE() AND
wp_posts.post_date >= DATE_SUB(CURDATE(), INTERVAL 3 YEAR)
GROUP BY YEAR(wp_posts.post_date), MONTH(wp_posts.post_date)
ORDER BY wp_posts.post_date DESC",
ARRAY_A);
$archive = array();
foreach ($news as $post):
$year = date('Y', strtotime($post['post_date']));
$month = date('m', strtotime($post['post_date']));
$month_name = date('F', strtotime($post['post_date']));
$post['url'] = 'NOT SURE ABOUT URL';
$archive[$year][$month_name] = $post;
endforeach;
I need to be able to link to specific years and months using http://example.com/2012/ and http://example.com/2012/10/.
As this involves a custom post type "news" I'm unsure how to make this happen?

Answer 1

In order to do what you require, you need to modify Wordpress rewrites to be able to capture the year/month/etc post data for a custom post type.
You may do this with the following code:
/**
* Custom post type date archives
*/
/**
* Custom post type specific rewrite rules
* #return wp_rewrite Rewrite rules handled by Wordpress
*/
function cpt_rewrite_rules($wp_rewrite) {
$rules = cpt_generate_date_archives('news', $wp_rewrite);
$wp_rewrite->rules = $rules + $wp_rewrite->rules;
return $wp_rewrite;
}
add_action('generate_rewrite_rules', 'cpt_rewrite_rules');
/**
* Generate date archive rewrite rules for a given custom post type
* #param string $cpt slug of the custom post type
* #return rules returns a set of rewrite rules for Wordpress to handle
*/
function cpt_generate_date_archives($cpt, $wp_rewrite) {
$rules = array();
$post_type = get_post_type_object($cpt);
$slug_archive = $post_type->has_archive;
if ($slug_archive === false) return $rules;
if ($slug_archive === true) {
$slug_archive = $post_type->name;
}
$dates = array(
array(
'rule' => "([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{1,2})/([0-9]{1,2})",
'vars' => array('year', 'monthnum', 'day')),
array(
'rule' => "([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{1,2})",
'vars' => array('year', 'monthnum')),
array(
'rule' => "([0-9]{4})",
'vars' => array('year'))
);
foreach ($dates as $data) {
$query = 'index.php?post_type='.$cpt;
$rule = $slug_archive.'/'.$data['rule'];
$i = 1;
foreach ($data['vars'] as $var) {
$query.= '&'.$var.'='.$wp_rewrite->preg_index($i);
$i++;
}
$rules[$rule."/?$"] = $query;
$rules[$rule."/feed/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$"] = $query."&feed=".$wp_rewrite->preg_index($i);
$rules[$rule."/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$"] = $query."&feed=".$wp_rewrite->preg_index($i);
$rules[$rule."/page/([0-9]{1,})/?$"] = $query."&paged=".$wp_rewrite->preg_index($i);
}
return $rules;
}
You will notice that I have hard-coded news in to the $rules = cpt_generate_date_archives('news', $wp_rewrite); portion of the code. You can change this as needed.
With this code, you should be able to navigate to http://yoursite.com/news/2013/02/ and receive an archive listing for that specific post type for that specific time.
For completeness, I will include how to generate a monthly archive widget in order to utilize this.
/**
* Get a montlhy archive list for a custom post type
* #param string $cpt Slug of the custom post type
* #param boolean $echo Whether to echo the output
* #return array Return the output as an array to be parsed on the template level
*/
function get_cpt_archives( $cpt, $echo = false )
{
global $wpdb;
$sql = $wpdb->prepare("SELECT * FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_type = %s AND post_status = 'publish' GROUP BY YEAR($wpdb->posts.post_date), MONTH($wpdb->posts.post_date) ORDER BY $wpdb->posts.post_date DESC", $cpt);
$results = $wpdb->get_results($sql);
if ( $results )
{
$archive = array();
foreach ($results as $r)
{
$year = date('Y', strtotime( $r->post_date ) );
$month = date('F', strtotime( $r->post_date ) );
$month_num = date('m', strtotime( $r->post_date ) );
$link = get_bloginfo('siteurl') . '/' . $cpt . '/' . $year . '/' . $month_num;
$this_archive = array( 'month' => $month, 'year' => $year, 'link' => $link );
array_push( $archive, $this_archive );
}
if( !$echo )
return $archive;
foreach( $archive as $a )
{
echo '<li>' . $a['month'] . ' ' . $a['year'] . '</li>';
}
}
return false;
}
To use this function just supply the slug of the custom post type, ie: get_cpt_archives( 'news' ). This will return an array of unique Year/Dates/Links, ie:
Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[month] => February
[year] => 2013
[link] => http://yoursite.com/news/2013/02
)
[1] => Array
(
[month] => January
[year] => 2013
[link] => http://yoursite.com/news/2013/01
)
)
You can loop through these with a foreach and output them however you want.
Alternatively, you can use get_cpt_archives( 'news', true ) which will automatically echo each item wrapped in an <li> linking to its specific archive.
The formatting of the output is not exactly what you wanted, so you will have to tweak it a bit to get it to display in the
Year
Month
Month
Year
Month
format that you require.
I hope this helps.

Answer 2

I know this is an old post, but there is a much more succinct way of doing what the OP is asking:
function cpt_add_rewrite_rules()
{
$cpt = 'news';
add_rewrite_rule($cpt.'/([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{1,2})/([0-9]{1,2})?$',
'index.php?post_type='.$cpt.'&year=$matches[1]&monthnum=$matches[2]&day=$matches[3]',
'top');
add_rewrite_rule($cpt.'/([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{1,2})?$',
'index.php?post_type='.$cpt.'&year=$matches[1]&monthnum=$matches[2]',
'top');
add_rewrite_rule($cpt.'/([0-9]{4})?$',
'index.php?post_type='.$cpt.'&year=$matches[1]',
'top');
}
add_filter('init', 'cpt_add_rewrite_rules');