Archives for custom post type based on a “date” meta value

2 comments

1. I did something similar for a client a while back, I’ll give you some of the code here as-is that you can possibly adapt to your needs. I’ll warn you, it’s quite a bit to parse through!

   First, I set up some custom rewrite rules to get the year/month URL structure and some query vars to pass the year and month to my template. In this example I have a page set up with the slug event-calendar that I use as my events list / archive page. This code would go in functions.php:

   <?php
   add_action( 'init', 'wpse_rewrites_init' );
   function wpse_rewrites_init(){
       // after adding, visit settings > permalinks to flush rewrite rules!
       add_rewrite_rule(
           'event-calendar/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/?$',
           'index.php?pagename=event-calendar&wpse_year=$matches[1]&wpse_month=$matches[2]',
           'top' );
       add_rewrite_rule(
           'event-calendar/([0-9]+)/?$',
           'index.php?pagename=event-calendar&wpse_year=$matches[1]',
           'top' );
   }
   
   add_filter( 'query_vars', 'wpse_query_vars' );
   function wpse_query_vars( $query_vars ){
       $query_vars[] = 'wpse_year';
       $query_vars[] = 'wpse_month';
       return $query_vars;
   }
   

   This is the code in my page-event-calendar.php template to query for events based on the year and month (if it’s set), otherwise I show just upcoming events:

   <?php
   // default args, upcoming events
   $args = array(
       'posts_per_page' => -1,
       'meta_key' => 'event_date',
       'meta_value' => date('Y-m-d'),
       'meta_compare' => '>=',
       'orderby' => 'meta_value',
       'order' => 'ASC'            
   );
   
   // get the year and month query vars
   $wpse_year = get_query_var('wpse_year');
   $wpse_month = get_query_var('wpse_month');
   
   // if a month was set we query for the requested month/year (we assume year is set if month is)
   if($wpse_month):
       $estart = $wpse_year.'-'.$wpse_month.'-01';
       $eend = $wpse_year.'-'.$wpse_month.'-31';
       $args = array(
           'posts_per_page' => -1,
           'meta_query' => array(
               array(
                   'key' => 'event_date',
                   'value' => array( $estart, $eend ),
                   'compare' => 'BETWEEN',
                   'type' => 'date',
               )
           ),
           'orderby' => 'meta_value',
           'order' => 'ASC'
       );
   endif;
   
   // if just a year is set, we query for the requested year
   if($wpse_year&&!$wpse_month):
       $estart = $wpse_year.'-01-01';
       $eend = $wpse_year.'-12-31';
       $args = array(
           'posts_per_page' => -1,
           'meta_query' => array(
               array(
                   'key' => 'event_date',
                   'value' => array( $estart, $eend ),
                   'compare' => 'BETWEEN',
                   'type' => 'date',
               )
           ),
           'orderby' => 'meta_value',
           'order' => 'ASC'
       );
   endif;
   
   // query for our events
   $events = new WP_Query($args);
   while($events->have_posts()) : $events->the_post();
       // do your normal loop stuff here
   endwhile;
   

   To output an archive list of years / months for my past events, I do some custom SQL to get all unique meta values for the event_date key. It’s quicker than doing a join with the actual posts, but the downside is you’ll get meta values for possibly unpublished posts. This was ok for my client’s needs, but possibly not yours.

   $query = "SELECT DISTINCT meta_value FROM $wpdb->postmeta WHERE meta_key = 'event_date' AND DATE(meta_value) < DATE(NOW()) ORDER BY meta_value DESC";
   $all_unique_dates = $wpdb->get_results($query);
   

   You could remove the AND DATE(meta_value) < DATE(NOW() condition if you want future events in the list as well.

   ok, that’s it! Hope you find some of this useful.

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2. Your URL display won’t work like that unfortunately…not without a good amount of shoehorning at least.

   Here’s the portion of the query you’ll need, this is untested, but should work, worst case you can store event data as a unix timestamp and convert back out when you go to display.

   $args = array(
       'post_type'  => 'event',
       'meta_query' => array(
           'key'     => 'date',
           'value'   => array( 'date_1', 'date 2' ), // try formatting these as dates and see if it works, if not, Unix timestamps will do just fine
           'compare' => 'BETWEEN'
       )
   );
   $posts = new WP_Query( $args );
   

   You can do the URLs in a less pretty manner and have it be example.com/post_type/?month=february pretty easily though. Hope this helps some.

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