How can I insert an expiration date into a table and having messages expire without breaking functionality? - coldfusion

Question

I’m using Coldfusion 9,0,0,251028 on Windows 7 64-bit, with a Microsoft Access 97 database.
The code is for an application that takes a submitted message from a form and posts it to a different page (breakingnews.cfm). The form values are inserted into the "news" table on a database, including the date the message was submitted (mes_dat) and the date it should expire (exp_dat).
On the database, the is_current and display columns have a default value of 0.
The form action is new_process.cfm, which does two things:
1) Does <cfset expdate = createdate(end_year, end_month, end_day)>. End_year, end_month, and end_day are dropdown selectors that set the expiration date. A problem I have had is expdate not being able to be inserted by post_breaking.cfm, but only when it is put online, on my local testing server there seems to be no problem.
2) Includes a template named "post_breaking.cfm", which runs these queries:
<cfquery name="get_init_info" datasource="#db#">
select id
from news
where is_current = 1
</cfquery>
<cfquery name="update_info_1" datasource="#db#">
update news
set is_current = 0, scrollshow = 0
</cfquery>
<cfif get_init_info.recordcount NEQ 0>
<cfquery name="update_info_2" datasource="#db#">
update news
set display = 1
where id = #get_init_info.id#
</cfquery>
</cfif>
<cfquery name="put_in_info" datasource="#db#">
insert into news
(is_current, display, mes_dat,mes_tim,mes_sub,mes_text,scrollshow, exp_dat)
values
(1,0, #createodbcdate(now())#, #createodbctime(now())#, '#subject#', '#message#',1, #expdate#)
</cfquery>
The message is then displayed on breakingnews.cfm if the column is_current on the news table is 1. This is code I have inherited, so I'm not sure how it does it, but the code only allows 5 messages at a time to have is_current = 1.
The part I'm trying to make happen is having a query run when breakingnews.cfm loads that checks if exp_dat is between now() and mes_dat to set is_current to 1, while still maintaining only 5 items having an is_current of 1.
When breakingnews.cfm is accessed it runs these queries:
<cfquery name="get_info" datasource="#db#">
select *
from news
where
<cfif not isdefined("id")>
is_current = 1
<cfelse>
id = #id#
</cfif>
order by mes_dat desc, mes_tim desc
</cfquery>
<cfquery name="add_exp" datasource="#db#">
UPDATE news
SET is_current = 1
WHERE now() BETWEEN mes_dat AND exp_dat
</cfquery>
<cfquery name="remove_exp" datasource="#db#">
UPDATE news
SET is_current = 0
WHERE now() NOT BETWEEN mes_dat AND exp_dat
</cfquery>
This will cause the messages that have an exp_dat between now() and mes_dat to be displayed and otherwise not display on breakingnews.cfm.
However, when a new message is submitted, upon accessing breakingnews.cfm the first time, only the newly submitted message is displayed.
If the page is refreshed, the messages that were filtered correctly will be displayed under the new message, but there will now be six items displaying on the page when there should only be five.
How can I get the correct amount of messages, and have them display the first time without needing a refresh?
I've gotten advice to replace the get_init_info query with
<cfquery name="get_init_info" datasource="#db#">
select id
from news
where exp_dat > now()
</cfquery>
but that caused all other rows in is_current and scrollshow to be changed to 0 after creating a new message (though the new message's scrollshow and is_current are 1).

Answer 1

My fist thought is to change how the system gets the news to display, but since you sppear not to have control of that, here's my suggestion. Please bear in mind that I've never used Access, so I'm using MS-SQ syntax.
Get the ids of the 5 items you want
select top 5 id
from bews
where exp_date > #createodbcdate(now)#
and display = 1
Now, set display = 0 on all items.
Finally, re-display the ids you found earlier.
update news
set display = 1
where id in #valuelist(query, "id")
If you have questions or corrections, feel free to comment.