if query doesn't work go back a month

[SFADuncan]

I think the best way to show you what I'm trying to achieve is to show you my current attempt:

$month = date('m');
$year = date('Y');
$thisMonth = "$year-$month-01 00:00:00";
$next_month = date('m', strtotime('+1 month'));
$nextMonth = "$year-" . ($next_month) . "-01 00:00:00";    

$data_published_vars = fetch_data_pblshd_blog($page_id, $thisMonth, $nextMonth);

$a='0';

while (!(is_array($data_published_vars)))
{
$this_month = date('m'-$a, strtotime('-1 month'));
$thisMonth = "$year-" . ($this_month) . "-01 00:00:00";
$data_published_vars = fetch_data_pblshd_blog($page_id, $thisMonth, $nextMonth);
$a=$a+1;
} 

It appears that Month 01 takeaway 1 = 0 when I need it to equal 12. (And actually I suspect I'll get into the same trouble when adding one month to month 12.

Anyway.... any ideas/help?

Simon

[SFADuncan]

Sorted!

$month = date('m');
$year = date('Y');
$thisMonth = "$year-$month-01 00:00:00";
$next_month = date('m', strtotime('+1 month'));
$nextMonth = "$year-" . ($next_month) . "-01 00:00:00";    

$data_published_vars = fetch_data_pblshd_blog($page_id, $thisMonth, $nextMonth);

$a='1';
while (!(is_array($data_published_vars)))
{
$this_month = mktime(0, 0, 0, date("m")-$a, date("d"),  date("Y"));
$thisMonth = date('Y-m', $this_month)."-01 00:00:00";
$data_published_vars = fetch_data_pblshd_blog($page_id, $thisMonth, $nextMonth);
$a=$a+1;
}