archive functionality for magento aw_blog extension - magento-1.7

Question

I have been working with a client who wanted a blog in the magento website. After installing the AW blog extension i realized that it doesn't have archive functionality, and i didn't find any solution in the web.
After few days of work, I have finally found a solution for this task. I didn't know where to post it, and I thought that this is the best place to share it.
I know that people usually don't post answers here, but I have to share, because out there, somebody is having difficult time, or might have.

Answer 1

I will presume that you already installed the AW Blog extension to your magento project. blog extension page
1) first of all we need a placeholder for future datepicker. I choose the sidebar of AW_blog extension: app\design\frontend\YOUR_THEME\default\template\aw_blog\menu.phtml
I added following html markup almost to the end:
<div class="block-content">
<div class="menu-recent">
<h5 class="uppercase"><?php echo Mage::helper('blog')->__('Archives'); ?></h5>
<div id="datepicker"></div>
</div>
</div>
2) After this i added jquery ui datepicker into project. we will need it for date selection. jquery ui page. Here I need make some note. I only copied the jquery-ui.js, jquery-ui.css, images folder with theme icons. I did this because i didn't need anything else. you can download everything if you want, but the key files are jquery-ui.js, jquery-ui.css, images folder.
a) copy jquery-ui.js into skin\js directory
b) copy jquery-ui.css and images folder into skin\frontend\YOUR_THEME\default\css directory
3) Add following code to app\design\frontend\default\default\layout\page.xml
<default translate="label" module="page">
<label>All Pages</label>
<block type="page/html" name="root" output="toHtml" template="page/3columns.phtml">
<block type="page/html_head" name="head" as="head">
....
<action method="addJs"><script>jquery-ui.js</script></action>
...
<action method="addCss"><stylesheet>css/jquery-ui.css</stylesheet></action>
4) add following code to app\design\frontend\YOUR_THEME\default\template\page\head.phtml
this is just simple work with datepicker plugin
jQuery(function(){
jQuery( "#datepicker" ).datepicker({
dateFormat:"yy-mm-dd",
onSelect: function(dateText) {
window.location = '<?php echo Mage::getBaseUrl();?>news/?date='+dateText;//refreshes screen
}
});
});
all these four 4 steps are for frontend stuff. now we will go to the backend programming
1) open app\code\community\AW\Blog\Block\blog.php and replace getPosts() function with following code
public function getPosts()
{
$collection = parent::_prepareCollection();
$tag = $this->getRequest()->getParam('tag');
$date = $this->getRequest()->getParam('date');//gets $_GET[date] parameter
if ($tag) {
$collection->addTagFilter(urldecode($tag));
}
else if ($date) { // checks if $date parameter exists
$collection->addDateFilter(urldecode($date));
}
parent::_processCollection($collection);
return $collection;
}
2) open app\code\community\AW\Blog\Model\Mysql4\Blog\Collection.php and add following function
public function addDateFilter($date) {
if ($date = trim($date)) {
$whereString = sprintf("main_table.created_time >= %s", $this->getConnection()->quote($date));
$this->getSelect()->where($whereString);
}
return $this;
}
This is it guys. If you need any help, just let me know. Thanks for your time.

Answer 2

for month and year list archive
public function addDateFilter($date) {
if ($date = trim($date)) {
$whereString = sprintf(
"main_table.created_time = %s OR main_table.created_time LIKE %s OR main_table.created_time LIKE %s ",
$this->getConnection()->quote($date), $this->getConnection()->quote($date . '-%'),
$this->getConnection()->quote('%-' . $date),$this->getConnection()->quote('%-' . $date . '-%')
);
$this->getSelect()->where($whereString);
}
return $this;
}
Examples:
foo.com/index.php/news/?date=2014 or bar.com/index.php/news/?date=2014-02