How to create Date explorer in cakephp

Question

Blockquote

I need some help in cakephp 2.9.
So my query is I have to create date explorer in such a way that
year(2017)
--Month(Jan)
--Month(feb)
--Month(March)
--Month(&so on)
where each Month contains some data which posted in that month.

    I have tried some solution But I am Getting
    year()2017
    --Month(Jan)
    year()2017
    --Month(Feb)

    which is not accurate solution.

    Kindly help to solve this problem.

This is my code.
$blog_date is retriving from database which is not a date





$initial = '';
                                        foreach ($blog_date as $date):
                                            $years = 
date('Y',strtotime($date['Blog']['publish']));
                                            if ($initial !== $years) {
                                               $initial = $years;
                                            echo $this->Html->tag('li', $this->Html->link($this->Html->tag('i', '', ['class' => 'fa fa-caret-left']).$initial, '/blogs/'/* .$slug.'/'.$key */, ['escape' => false]));
                                        }
                                    endforeach;