Auto disable comments with custom field

Question

i have this code to disable comments after X days based on publish date. How can edit this code to auto close comments based on a specific date using custom field? Thank you.

function close_comments( $posts ) {
    if ( !is_single() ) { return $posts; }
    if ( time() - strtotime( $posts[0]->post_date_gmt ) > ( 30 * 24 * 60 * 60 ) ) {
        $posts[0]->comment_status = 'closed';
        $posts[0]->ping_status    = 'closed';
    }
    return $posts;
}
add_filter( 'the_posts', 'close_comments' );

Answer 1

Editing your code to use a custom field is fairly trivial...

function close_comments( $posts ) {
  if ( !is_single() ) { 
    return $posts; 
  }
  $cmeta = get_post_meta($posts[0]->ID,'your_field_name',true);
  if ( $posts[0]->post_date_gmt < $cmeta ) {
    $posts[0]->comment_status = 'closed';
    $posts[0]->ping_status    = 'closed';
  }
  return $posts;
}
add_filter( 'the_posts', 'close_comments' );

I am not sure that that approach is the right one though.

1. You are really just brute forcing a closed status. This is a "display only" hack. It doesn't change the database status at all.
2. This runs on the front end, every time any post displays and runs for many other queries as well. That strikes me as pretty profligate.

I think I would rethink the whole thing to use wp_cron