WordPress redundant posts based on meta field

Question

I have a loop that I use to render films that will be showing using a custom meta field. The custom date field has a repeater and can appear multiple times, e.g.

1: Exciting movie - Show Date: 14/01/2017 09:00 - Show Date: 15/04/2018 17:00 - Show Date: 23/06/2018 09:00

2: But I do not want to display a date that has passed, e.g. first date - Show Date: 14/01/2017 09:00 [useless date now based on today's date]

3: This is my script but it shows repeating movies. I want it that if a movie is on the schedule (has a future date, only display it one). The rest of the dates can be viewed on the single page.

<div class="bet-slider">

<h2>Coming Soon</h2>

<?php
    $args = array(
        'post_type'         => 'films',
        'posts_per_page'    => -1,
        /** limited to twenty shows, the rest can be viewed in the tv schedule **/
        'order'             => 'ASC',
        'orderby'           => 'meta_value',
        'meta_key'          => 'airing_date_and_time',
        'meta_type'         => 'DATETIME'
    );

    $loop = new WP_Query( $args );
?>

<?php if ( $loop->have_posts() ) : ?>

    <ul id="bet-slides" class="bxslider">
        <?php while ( $loop->have_posts() ) : $loop->the_post(); ?>
            <?php

                // get show times
                $show_times = get_field('airing_date_and_time', get_the_ID() );

                $post_id = get_the_id();


                foreach($show_times as $show_time_array) {

                    // return valid times :-)
                    $show_time = $show_time_array['show_date_and_time'];
                    $ObjectShowTime = \DateTime::createFromFormat("Y-m-d H:i", $show_time);
                    $show_time_clean = $ObjectShowTime->format("Y-m-d H:i");

                    // get the date today
                    $cur_date = current_time('Y-m-d H:i', 2 );


                    // display shows in the future only
                    if($cur_date < $show_time_clean) { ?>

                        <li>
                            <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>">
                                <img src="<?php echo get_field('film_cover');?>" alt="<?php echo get_the_title();?>" />
                            </a>
                            <?php //echo "Show date :" . $ObjectShowTime->format("Y-m-d H:i"); ?>
                        </li>

                    <?php }  ?>

                <?php }

            ?>

        <?php endwhile; ?>
    </ul>

<?php endif; ?>

<?php wp_reset_postdata(); ?>

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Answer 1

I ended create another custom post type to manage the schedule and I created a relation to the existing films custom post type: - Films (all films without tv guide) - TV schedule (each post represents time in the tv guide and can only be related to one movie). I then enabled future posts to be displayed, this allowed me to use the default post date to so re-arrange the schedule. The default post date also allowed me to expire posts older than 30 days easily.

I plan to write the functionality into a plugin for anyone who might be interested. I will come back and update this.