Wordpress posts for multiple years

Question

Trying to get posts from a specific category for specific years. Nothing is working, including this:

<?php $args=array(
'cat' => '11', //Category I'm targeting
'year' => 2008,2009,2010 //Years I want
);
$my_query = new WP_Query($args);
if( $my_query->have_posts() ) {
while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post(); ?>

That code will only display posts for 2008.

Answer 1

You should use a date range instead by filtering posts_where:

function wpse_43397_where($where=''){
    $where .= " AND post_date >= '2008-01-01' AND post_date < '2010-12-31'";
    return $where;
}

add_filter('posts_where', 'wpse_43397_where');
$my_query = new WP_Query($args);
remove_filter('posts_where', 'wpse_43397_where');

Answer 2

This isn't possible with the WP_Query API:

Note: The queries above return posts for a specific date period in history, i.e. "Posts from X year, X month, X day". They are unable to fetch posts from a timespan relative to the present, so queries like "Posts from the last 30 days" or "Posts from the last year" are not possible with a basic query, and require use of the posts_where filter to be completed. The examples below use the posts_where filter, and should be modifyable for most time-relative queries.

So you will need to add a custom filter before your query, perform the query and then remove the query again (so it doesn't effect other queries).

// Create a new filtering function that will add our where clause to the query
function my_restrict_to_years( $where = '' ) {
    // posts  in years 2008-2010 
    $where .= " AND post_date >= '2008-01-01' AND post_date <= '2010-12-31'";
    return $where;
}

add_filter( 'posts_where', 'my_restrict_to_years' );
$args=array(
 'cat' => '11', //Category I'm targeting
 );
$my_query = new WP_Query($args);
remove_filter( 'posts_where', 'my_restrict_to_years' );

Not tested