PHP Loop - tweaking an timeline archive page

The archive page of astheria.com is excellen开发者_如何学Got, but have a question regarding the PHP loop used to create it.

The site's author posted the code: Creating a Timeline Style Archive Page

There's a part that I'm unclear on. Should there be a gap in the timeline of more than a year (such as postings for 2007, then nothing for 2008 and 2009, then picking up again in 2010), it looks like this code will print yearly headers (with an empty <ol>).

How might I tweak this to skip these empty years?

The general logic can be as simple as (half-pseudo code):

$posts = fetchFromDatabase('SELECT * FROM `posts` ORDER BY `posted` DESC');

// $posts = array(
//     array('posted' => '2010-09-13 12:42:31', 'title' => ...)
//     array(...)
// )

$currentYear = null;
foreach ($posts as $post) {
    $year = date('Y', strtotime($post['posted']));
    if ($year != $currentYear) {
        printf('<h2>%s</h2>', $year);
        $currentYear = $year;
    }

    echo $post['title'];
}

In words:

• Fetch all posts to be displayed from the database sorted by date.
• Keep track of the "current year" you're outputting.
• Upon entering a new year, output it, update the current year.

That way only the years of existing posts are output.

Replaced this code block:

  else if ( $prev_post_year != $post_year ) {
    /* Close off the OL */
    ?>
    </ol>
    <?php

    $working_year  =  $prev_post_year;

    /* Print year headings until we reach the post year */
    while ( $working_year > $post_year ) {
      $working_year--;
      ?>
      <h3 class="archive_year"><?php echo $working_year?></h3>
      <?php
    }

    /* Open a new ordered list */
    ?>
    <ol class="archives_list">
    <?php
  }

With this one to achieve the desired results:

  else if ( $prev_post_year != $post_year ) {
    /* Close off the OL */
    ?>
    </ol>
    <h3 class="archive_year"><?php echo $post_year?></h3>
    <ol class="archives_list">
    <?php
  }