Archives Class
The Archives class manages the categorization and retrieval of posts by their publication date (month and year). It includes a caching mechanism for archive lists to optimize database performance.
Core Features
- Dynamic Archive Listing: Generates lists of months/years where content was published.
- Automated Caching: Stores the archive structure in a JSON-encoded system option, which is automatically updated every 24 hours.
- Post Support: Currently optimized for content of type
'post'.
Methods
List Method
Usage: echo Archives::list(int $max, string $type = 'post');
Returns an HTML <ul> list of links to monthly archives.
- It reads data from the
archives_list system option.
- Automatically formats month names using the
Date::monthName() utility.
Generate Method
Usage: Archives::generate(string $type = 'post');
Triggers an update to the archive cache if more than 24 hours have passed since the last update.
Validate Method
Usage: Archives::validate(int $month, int $year);
Return: bool
Checks if any posts actually exist for the given month and year. This is used by the router to prevent empty archive pages.
Internal Workflow
- Extraction: The
fetchData() method queries the database using GROUP BY Month(date), Year(date) to find all unique publication periods.
- Persistence: The resulting structure is saved as a JSON string in the
archives_list option.
- Trigger: The class constructor calls
generate() on every request to ensure the cache stays fresh without requiring manual intervention.
