Filtering Custom Post Type by Comparing Date and Two Meta Keys

Question

I am probably just overlooking something here, but some pointers would be greatly appreciated.

I am trying to create an event website using Wordpress and the Advanced Custom Fields plugin.

Now the events have two options, they are either One Day Events, or Multiple Day Events.

I have given them fields that the user can put the date in with the date picker.

One Day Event - one_day_event_date Multiple Day Event - event_start_date , event_end_date

(these output YYYYMMDD format: ie: 20140117)

My problem comes when I want to filter the results in the loop.

Ideally, I would like to show the events in date order, using the fields one_day_event_date and event_start_date.

But I want it to filter older events based on the values one_day_event_date and event_end_date

This is the code I have tried so far:

<?php
$currentdate = date("Ymd",mktime(0,0,0,date("m"),date("d")-1,date("Y")));
$args = array(
'post_type' => 'event',
'meta_query' => array(
    array(
        'key' => 'event_end_date',
        'value' => $currentdate,
        'compare' => '>',
        'type' => 'DATE'
    ),
    array(
        'key' => 'one_day_event_date',
        'value' => $currentdate,
        'compare' => '>',
        'type' => 'DATE'
    )
),
'orderby' => 'meta_value_num',
'order' => 'ASC'
);
$query = new WP_Query( $args ); ?>

Answer 1

Is the problem that your filter is working but the sort doesn't work? If so, I believe it's because you need to specify which meta_key you'd like to sort by. For example, you'll need to add either event_end_date or one_day_event_date as the value for meta_key at the top level array.

Try this...

<?php
$currentdate = date("Ymd",mktime(0,0,0,date("m"),date("d")-1,date("Y")));
$args = array(
    'post_type' => 'event',
    'meta_key' => 'event_end_date', // this is where you specify which meta field to sort on
    'meta_query' => array(
        array(
            'key' => 'event_end_date',
            'value' => $currentdate,
            'compare' => '>',
            'type' => 'DATE'
            ),
        array(
            'key' => 'one_day_event_date',
            'value' => $currentdate,
            'compare' => '>',
            'type' => 'DATE'
            )
        ),
    'orderby' => 'meta_value_num',
    'order' => 'ASC'
);
$query = new WP_Query( $args );
?>

If you need to sort them both by a start date, for example, I would actually give them both a date called start_date and sort by that... Then the one day events would just not have an end_date (or maybe the end date can just be the same as the start date).