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i'm looking for a good and easy way to have a custom post type "event" that can have multiple dates. (I have tested about 20 plugins). I think i have no problem building a metabox allowing the user to duplicate the field group "date and time" multiple times. But how would a query look like that creates a chronological list of events from the meta data?

(The project is a playing schedule for a theatre. Productions play on several dates.) Thank you!

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  • this depends on the way you are storing the data, every date and time as a field or all of the as an array?
    – Bainternet
    Feb 24, 2011 at 18:57
  • I haven't set up the metabox yet. If storing the data as an array is useful i will do it this way. I'm thinking of using WPAlchemy for duplicating fields: farinspace.com/wpalchemy-metabox
    – Christoph
    Feb 24, 2011 at 19:55
  • Think it may be better manageable to do it as a hierarchical post type. Event = first level, individual sessions = second level.
    – wyrfel
    Feb 24, 2011 at 20:18
  • BTW: Since you tested 20 of them, can you recommend one? I need to replace the old Event Calendar Plugin with something a little more modern. But i need a calendar widget that shows the events.
    – wyrfel
    Feb 24, 2011 at 20:19
  • @wyrfel: I want the administration of events to be as simple as possible. - A meta box with a date field - An option to duplicate the field - All dates saved as an array.
    – Christoph
    Feb 24, 2011 at 22:04

1 Answer 1

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Here's a plan:

  1. Store the dates as individual custom fields with the same meta_key (ex: start_date)
  2. JOIN the wp_posts table with the wp_postmeta table, without a GROUP BY (to allow the same event to appear more than once)
  3. ORDER BY start_date

The full query would look like this:

SELECT wp_posts.*, meta_value AS start_date
FROM wp_posts INNER JOIN wp_postmeta ON (ID = post_ID)
WHERE post_type = 'event'
AND post_status = 'publish'
AND meta_key = 'start_date'
ORDER BY start_date

PS: This requires you store the date in YYYY-MM-DD format, which you should do anyway, for compatibility with mysql2date() etc.

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  • Thank you very much @scripu! I have to work on another project today, but i'll try your solution as soon as possible!
    – Christoph
    Feb 25, 2011 at 9:12
  • I don't understand how to save multiple dates of the same event with the same meta_key. Could you please point that out? Thank you!
    – Christoph
    Feb 25, 2011 at 13:15
  • Just call add_post_meta( $post_id, 'start_date', $date ); for each date. See codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/add_post_meta
    – scribu
    Feb 25, 2011 at 14:34
  • Perfect! It works! For now only with the WP built-in custom fields. I have to figure out how to do it with my own fields. Thank you very much, @scribu!
    – Christoph
    Feb 26, 2011 at 19:19
  • Hey, I find you answer very helpful, thanks for that! I wonder if I can implement such a thing and query the events to results only the events from today on (e.g. start_date >= TODAY)? Thanks :)
    – benjah
    Nov 21 at 13:12

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