simple company news block

There is alread a feature request. Some one beat me to it.

You can see the final outcome here: http://www.blake.co.za

What I did was create a content type called company news and created a Vocabulary for that block and assigned that vocabulary to the company news content type.

Then I created my Company News taxonomy block.

Ok thats the normal stuff.

The Hack.
In the taxonomy_block.module file (ver 4.6.3), lines 231 – 246 inside the taxonomy_block_get_block function

From this

    $nodes = db_query(db_rewrite_sql('SELECT DISTINCT(n.nid), n.title, n.body FROM {term_node} t INNER JOIN {node} n ON t.nid = n.nid WHERE t.tid IN (%s) AND n.status = 1 ORDER BY sticky DESC, created DESC LIMIT %d'), implode($tids, ','), $result->length);

    $block['subject'] = $result->name;

    while ($node = db_fetch_object($nodes)) {
       $x++;
       $content .= '<div id="'. $x .'" class="'. (substr(decbin($x), -1) ? 'flip' : 'flop') .'"><h2>'. l($node->title, 'node/'. $node->nid,  array('title'=>t('view all'))) .'</h2>';
       if($result->teaser) {
         $content .= strip_tags(substr($node->body, 0, $result->teaser) . (strlen($node->body) > $result->teaser ? '...' : '')) .'</div>';
       }
       else {
         $content .= '</div>';
       }
    }

    $content .= '<div class="more-link '. (substr(decbin($x), -1) ? 'flip' : 'flop') .'">'. l(t("more"), 'taxonomy/term/'. implode($tids, '+'), array("title" => t("View all."))) .'</div>';

To This

    $nodes = db_query(db_rewrite_sql('SELECT DISTINCT(n.nid), n.title, n.body, n.created FROM {term_node} t INNER JOIN {node} n ON t.nid = n.nid WHERE t.tid IN (%s) AND n.status = 1 ORDER BY sticky DESC, created DESC LIMIT %d'), implode($tids, ','), $result->length);

    $block['subject'] = $result->name;

    while ($node = db_fetch_object($nodes)) {
       $x++;
       $content .= '<div id="'. $x .'" class="'. (substr(decbin($x), -1) ? 'flip' : 'flop') .'">' . format_date($node->created, "tiny") .'<br /><h2>'. l($node->title, 'node/'. $node->nid,  array('title'=>t('view all'))) .'</h2>';
       if($result->teaser) {
         $content .= strip_tags(substr($node->body, 0, $result->teaser) . (strlen($node->body) > $result->teaser ? '...' : '')) .'</div>';
       }
       else {
         $content .= '</div>';
       }
    }

    $content .= '<div class="more-link">'. l(t("more"), 'taxonomy/term/'. implode($tids, '+'), array("title" => t("View all."))) .'</div>';

Line 231
In the sql I added n.created, so I can have a date. Then I just modified the html that gets outputted to my likings.

Line 237
Added . format_date($node->created, "tiny") . (also hacked the format_date function to add tiny as a format type).

Line 246
Changed View all to more (could have used locale module)

The format_date function is in the includes/common.inc file starting at line 852.

I add

    case 'tiny':
      $format = variable_get('date_format_tiny', 'd/m/Y');//
      break;

Under switch ($type) {“ after line 865.

The problem for me with the format_date function was that custom does nothing. If I had more time I would have maybe modified custom to accept the passed in values. Looking back at it now that would have been easier.

One thing is not 100% correct. variable_get('date_format_tiny', 'd/m/Y'); looks for a variable called 'date_format_tiny witch does not exist so it defaults to my value of 'd/m/Y'. I have not tried it but I think you can just say.

$format = 'd/m/Y';

'd/m/Y' is the formating for the php date function also see http://www.php.net/date

Hope that helps