How to get CMS block ids between dates?

Question

Going forward with my customization I would like to get CMS blocks using a filter:

My code to get the collection:

    $today = Mage::getModel( 'core/date' )->date( "Y-m-d" );
    $collection = Mage::getModel( 'cms/block' )->getCollection()
      ->addFieldToFilter( 'is_slider', true )
      ->addFieldToFilter( 'start_time', array( 'lteq' => $today ))
      ->addFieldToFilter( 'end_time', array( 'gteq' => $today ))
      ->getAllIds()
      ;

is it possible to do it better ?

in further steps I'm looping trough to get blocks identifiers and put into array then return array:

    foreach($collection as $id){
        $slides[] = Mage::getModel('cms/block')->load($id)->getData('identifier');  
    }
    $this->_slides = $slides;
    return $this->_slides;

I would like to add also a sort by "order_slide" so I can decide which slide is first and which one will be last.

---

Edit:

Final version of the function:

public function getSlideIds()
{
    $today = Mage::getModel( 'core/date' )->date( "Y-m-d" );
    $collection = Mage::getModel( 'cms/block' )->getCollection()
      ->addFieldToSelect('identifier')
      ->addFieldToFilter( 'is_slider', true )
      ->addFieldToFilter( 'start_time', array( 'lteq' => $today ))
      ->addFieldToFilter( 'end_time', array( 'gteq' => $today ))
      ;
    foreach($collection as $id){
        $slides[] = $id->getData('identifier'); 
    }
    $this->_slides = $slides;
    return $this->_slides;
}

works properly. Thank you Douglas. Actually I should change now function name to getSlideIdentifiers() :P

Answer 1

With your updated code snippet, you could shorten this to:

$today = Mage::getModel( 'core/date' )->date( "Y-m-d" );
$collection = Mage::getModel( 'cms/block' )->getCollection()
  ->addFieldToSelect('identifier')
  ->addFieldToFilter('is_slider', array('eq' => '1'))
  ->addFieldToFilter('start_time', array( 'lteq' => $today))
  ->addFieldToFilter('end_time', array( 'gteq' => $today));

foreach($collection as $cmsBlock){
    $slides[] = $cmsBlock->getData('identifier');
}

$this->_slides = $slides;
return $this->_slides;

This would reduce the overhead of making many DB calls loading the CMS_BLOCK model repeatedly.

If you adapted the function that receives this output, you could probably return $collection instead.