Formatting custom meta box date from YYYY/MM/DD to a more readable alternative

1 Views

QUESTION

This is following a previous question that was graciously answered by Milo earlier here – How to sort CPT by custom meta value (date), and return posts month by month

In short, I’m having some issues with properly formatting my custom meta box date’s in a few areas… Namely, in the back-end in my custom columns, and then in the front-end in my archive template.

Read More

For example, in my archive template I’m trying to return the current date that the posts belong to via the code pasted below, but when I visit a month with no posts my template returns the date “January 1970” instead. 

<?php $calendar_month = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'epr_startdate', TRUE);?>
<?php $this_month = strtotime($calendar_month); ?>
<span id="current_month"><?php echo date( 'F Y', $this_month ); ?></span>

Additionally, in the back-end I’m trying to have it so that if just the “start date” is created then ONLY output that information, whereas, if the user enters both a “start date” and an “end date” then retun both dates, but when I use the code example below my start dates are returned in duplicate like this instead: Mar 3, 2013 — Mar 3, 2013. 

case "eventdate":
                $eventstart = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'epr_startdate', true);
                $eventstart_col = strtotime($eventstart);

                $eventend = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'epr_enddate', true);
                $eventend_col = strtotime($eventend);

                if ( get_post_meta($post->ID, 'epr_startdate', true) && ! get_post_meta($post->ID, 'epr_enddate', true) )
                    echo date( 'M n, Y', $eventstart_col );
                elseif ( get_post_meta($post->ID, 'epr_enddate', true) )
                    echo date( 'M n, Y', $eventstart_col ) . ' &mdash; ' . date( 'M n, Y', $eventend_col );
                else
                    echo 'NA';
                break;

Thank you in advance for your time.
Best

FINAL SOLUTION

Big thank you to s_ha_dum for his patience and support!
Pasted below are the final working solutions to my question…

Correctly outputting the date when no posts exist for the currently queried month: 

<?php $this_month = strtotime($calendar_month);
if (false === $this_month) {
$this_month = strtotime(get_query_var( 'calendar_year' ) . get_query_var( 'calendar_month' ) .'01');
} ?>
<span id="current_month"><?php echo date( 'F Y', $this_month ); ?></span><?php
?>

Custom columns: 

case "eventdate":
                $start_date = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'epr_startdate', true);
                $start_date_col = strtotime($start_date);           
                $end_date = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'epr_enddate', true);
                $end_date_col = strtotime($end_date);
                
                if ( $start_date_col && !$end_date_col ) 
                    echo date( 'M d, Y', $start_date_col );
                elseif ( $start_date_col && $end_date_col )
                    echo date( 'M d, Y', $start_date_col ) . ' &mdash; ' . date( 'M d, Y', $end_date_col );  
                else
                    echo 'NA';
                break;

Redirecting /calendar -> /calendar/yyyy/mm: 

function redirect_empty_archive() {
$m = get_query_var('calendar_month');
$y = get_query_var('calendar_year');
    if (
        is_post_type_archive('calendar') &&
        ( empty($m) || empty($y) )
    ) {
        wp_safe_redirect( '/calendar' . date('/Y/m') );
    }
}
add_action('template_redirect','redirect_empty_archive');
Post Views: 1

Related posts

Leave a Reply

1 comment

  1. but when I visit a month with no posts my template returns the date
    “January 1970” instead.

    Yes. That will happen. UNIXTIME began on Jan 1, 1970. That is “0000/00/00” but negative numbers work back until sometime in 1901. strtotime will return false for anything outside that range, including your nonexistent dates. date will assume “day zero” if given a bad date, hence you get Jan 1, 1970 for nonexistent or otherwise flawed dates. 64 bit machines can handle larger ranges, if I remember correctly. Either way a nonexistent date will give you 1970. Try:

    $calendar_month = "1901/01/01";
$this_month = strtotime($calendar_month);
var_dump($this_month);
echo '<br />';
echo date('Y',$this_month);
echo '<br />';

    You want to make sure you have a good date before displaying it.

    <?php $this_month = strtotime($calendar_month); 
if (false !== $this_month) { ?>
  <span id="current_month"><?php echo date( 'F Y', $this_month ); ?></span><?php
}

    Your other code is a little bulky, but looks like it should work except that your date format is wrong. You aren’t getting “Month Day, Year” as I suspect you want but “Month-Name Month-Number, Year”, which will look like a duplicate if the two dates are in the same month/year. Take a good look at the date formatting operators.

    $eventstart = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'epr_startdate', true);
$eventstart_col = strtotime($eventstart);

$eventend = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'epr_enddate', true);
$eventend_col = strtotime($eventend);

if ( $eventstart_col && !$eventend_col ) {
    // only the start date
    echo date( 'M d, Y', $eventstart_col );
} elseif ( $eventstart_col && $eventend_col ) {
    // both start and end date
    echo date( 'M d, Y', $eventstart_col ) . ' &mdash; ' . date( 'M d, Y', $eventend_col );  
} else {
    echo 'NA';
}

    I think I have that put back together correctly.