Today a friend of mine asked me if I knew of a way to find the next 12 months (starting with next month) and returning an array of those months and their corresponding year. I told him that I was certain that I could do something like this and set out to do it. I came up with:
<?php /** * Gets the next 12 months of the year, starting again at January. * * This function will return an array of 'month year' for the next twelve months * * @access public * @return array Array of month and year strings */ function getNextMonths() { /** * Get this month by number * * Using the numeric value of the month allows for easy transposition into a * new array. */ $tm = date('n'); /** * Get this year - because we will need this for the string output */ $ty = date('Y'); /** * Array of months keyed at 1 * * These are keyed at 1 because the date() function does this */ $ms = array(1 => 'January', 'February', 'March', 'April', 'May', 'June', 'July', 'August', 'September', 'October', 'November', 'December'); /** * Create a variable to hold out output array */ $ma = array(); /** * Now build the array, using only one loop */ for ($j = 1, $i = $tm; $j <= 12; $i++, $j++, $ma[$j] = $i <= 12 ? "$ms[$i] $ty" : $ms[$i-12].' '.($ty+1)); /** * Send back what we just made */ return $ma; } /** * Output control - for the record, I do not count this as a line of code :-) */ header('Content-Type: text/plain'); /** * Test it */ var_dump(getNextMonths()); ?> |
Thinking that I had found the promise land with the awesome little bit of my brainy goodness I posed this problem to my coworker as a code challenge (we do that from time to time to keep our brains thinking). To my surprise and glee, my coworker came through and kick my sorry ass all over the place with his little piece of goodness (I added the comments):
<?php /** * Gets the next 12 months from this month * * @return array Array of "month year" strings */ function getNextMonths() { for ($i = 1; $i < 13; $i++) { $array[] = date('F Y', mktime(0, 0, 0, date('m') + $i, 1, date('y'))); } return $array; } // Test it var_dump(getNextMonths()); ?> |
Arrogance is of the devil and I think I have taken my fair share of it. Congrats Jason, you put me in my place. And Mark is now a little happier too because you totally gave him some kick ass code.
Now to open the discussion a tad… which one do you like and why? Comment away. I would be interested to see your comments.
I should have known it would start this way, with the noise and the “I’m hungry” and the “Did not!” and the “Did too!”. Seems as though almost all day-afters are the same. The thing that made this morning a little different I think was the sheer volume of what had to be done today to make today work.
First, and probably the most difficult, thing of the day was actually waking up. After last night just the thought of getting out of bed this morning was daunting. Then the thought of a living room that was beat to hell seemed to add to the stack. Throw in the fact that we needed to leave early this morning for the festivities of the day AND that I had to feed this army of a sleepover and it is easy to see that I was not looking forward to being awake at any point today (except for the fun stuff that is).
After coming to grips with what the day had in store for us I decided it was time to handle the feeding of the flock. And what better way to do that than with some eggs. But how many should I cook for eight girls, my son, my wife and I? This is what I calculated:
2 dozen eggs ought to do it
Yep, you counted right. 24 eggs. Two dozen of them. That is a lot of eggs (don’t be fooled though, we go through 14 just in my family alone). Alas, I even needed to haul out the big bowl to harness all of them things.
2 dozen eggs in a bowl... the big bowl
So I scrambled up those eggs after beating them something fierce and was able to serve up the eggs and toast in just enough time to get us out of the house almost an hour late. Fortunately for us the hour late was made better by the fact that the people that were going to be there when we eventually end up there were also late making the beginning to our festivities better.
Where is there? There is here, the Malibu Grand Prix and Castle. Bekah wanted to drive go carts for her birthday so we hit up the go carts, bumper boats and mini golf for the day. The reason we wanted to be there early was because a group of 25 was scheduled for a party immediately after ours. Like I said though, they were late too so we actually had the track almost entirely to ourselves for the duration of the driving. I was blessed to be able to take my daughter Adriannah on two laps and a friend of my daughter Rebekah’s on two laps (which means I got four laps baby, yeah!).
After the driving was the bumper boating which was a blast. Sandi took Alaynah on the bumper boats and had great big water battles with all of the other kids. She was soaked, they were soaked, it was a big old soakfest. Which was good because the sun was starting to peak and it was getting hot. Not to mention that fact that were about to embark on hitting the greens with eleven of us, count it, eleven of us playing.
Golf did not go as well as the rest of the day did. It was nice that we made it through about five holes, after which kids started dropping off like flies. By the sixteenth we had five playing and Alaynah wasn’t even hitting her ball anymore, she was walking it up to the hole and dropping it in. It was hot, there was no shade and we had killed all of our water by the fourth hole. Crap.
The nice thing though was that we hit the arcade soon after that. The arcade is air conditioned and for the most part devoid of life as we know it. We were the only people on the place for a while until a few other people decided to crash the joint. By then though we were out of tokens and just basically playing on the various sit down games. Not playing the games, playing on them.
We managed to leave the place after only about four hours which was truly just about all I could stand of it. It was hot, I was tired and the kids were cranky from not sleeping enough last night. At the end of the day (the play day that is) we all needed a little R&R. Which is what we are having. Right now.
Every now and again someone writes a line or two of code that really makes me smile. Such is the case with this outcome determinating and decision making class below. This code is being reproduced, with or without consent, from the PHP Developers Network‘s own scottayy.
<?php /** * Coin flipper class helps determine outcome of situations in which an outcome * cannot be decided by sheer manpower alone. * * @author Scott Martin <scottayy@devnetwork.net> * @license None, don't even try to use this or your hair will turn yellow */ class coin { /** * The outcome determinators * * Each invocation of this object will require a determinator upon which the * object relies to build a determined outcome. These are those determinators. * * @access private * @var array */ private static $_sides = array('heads', 'tails'); /** * The determinating method * * This method, when called, invokes a determination sequence and returns a * determined value for use in decision making. * * @access public * @return string Randomly selected determinator */ public static function flip() { // Quick, randomize me some determinators shuffle(self::$_sides); // Quick, offer it back before it gets angry return self::$_sides[mt_rand(0, 1)]; } } /** * We should always test our determinating decision establisher * * 2,4,6,8 You know you want to determinate */ echo coin::flip(); ?> |
For those that just have to have an object to instantiate (and you know who you are), there is this lightly modified version for your obsessive/compulsive selves:
<?php /** * Coin flipper class helps determine outcome of situations in which an outcome * cannot be decided by shear manpower alone. * * @author Scott Martin <scottayy@devnetwork.net> * @license None, don't even try to use this or your hair will turn yellow */ class coin { /** * The outcome determinators * * Each invocation of this object will require a determinator upon which the * object relies to build a determined outcome. These are those determinators. * * @access private * @var array */ private $_sides = array('heads', 'tails'); /** * The determinating method * * This method, when called, invokes a determination sequence and returns a * determined value for use in decision making. * * @access public * @return string Randomly selected determinator */ public function flip() { // Quick, randomize me some determinators shuffle($this->_sides); // Quick, offer it back before it gets angry return $this->_sides[mt_rand(0, 1)]; } } /** * We should always test our determinating decision establisher */ $coin = new coin; /** * 2,4,6,8 You know you want to determinate */ echo $coin->flip(); ?> |
See, just looking at that code makes you want to smile doesn’t it? Geeks are great.
Just about every my company sponsors a huge Beef VS. Pork rib cook off between two of the longer standing employees of my company. It is a beautiful rivalry that sparks the most creative of imaginations into delving into areas that most folks should not go. It gets bold, it get bloody. It gets personal. And it gets delicious.
This year the fella in my department that cooks the beef ribs ordered up 120 pounds of beef ribs. I am not sure how much the lady from the other side ordered. All I know is that when it came time to eat we ate. All of us from our corporate office plus some from the branch office next door. I even heard that there would be enough to feed those employees that are night shift. Wow. That must be a lot of food.
To put it into perspective, this image shows beef ribs that were eaten at our lunch time celebration. This was one of three full grill sets of beef ribs cooked for us.
There were three other backyard type grills that were in effect for the pork team as well. And both sides of the house were cooking when I got to work at 8:30. It was insane. And delicious. And very fun.
So thos that spent the best part of their day on their feet preparing, cooking, cleaning, serving and generally taking care of the rest of the spoiled lot of us, thank you. Your efforts did not go unnoticed.