Get comments after specific date

Question

I don't think this is a parameter in get_comments( $args ); so I'm using a SQL statement. First I obtain a comment date from a separate table I created. Afterwards, I want to retrieve all comments made after that date.

$last_updated_comment = "
    SELECT comment_date FROM wp_last_comment
    ORDER BY comment_date DESC LIMIT 1";
$last_updated_comment = $wpdb->get_results( $wpdb->prepare($last_updated_comment));
print_r( $last_updated_comment );

This produces:

Array ( [0] => stdClass Object ( [comment_date] => 2012-03-09 09:03:00 ) ) 

Therefore, I add the foreach statement to access the object within the array:

foreach($last_updated_comment as $key => $object){
print_r( $object);
echo "<br /><br />";
}

@Stephen Harris, Thanks for the syntax help. Next, foreach object, get the date:

foreach($object as $key => $date_lookup){
    echo $date_lookup . '<br /><br />';
}

With output:

$date_lookup = 2012-03-09 09:03:00

---

Part 2: Comparing dates in SQL statement

Now that I've obtained the reference date, I want to get all comments from wp_comments after $date_lookup:

global $wpdb;
$sql = "
    SELECT comment_post_ID, comment_author, comment_author_email, comment_date, comment_content, comment_approved, comment_type, comment_parent
    FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_date > '%$date_lookup%' ";
$new_comments = $wpdb->get_results($sql);
print_r( $new_comments );

Now it seems that the > operator is looking at the time and ignoring the year because my output includes an array of comments with dates from 2011.

Is the > operator the correct tool to use?

Answer 1

This a php syntax error, try:

foreach($last_updated_comment as $key => $last_comment_date){
    print_r( $last_comment_date );
    echo "<br /><br />";
}

Answer 2

$date_lookup must be wrapped in quotes (for a reason I cannot say with confidence).

The correct syntax for comparing the date:

global $wpdb;
$sql = "
    SELECT comment_post_ID, comment_author, comment_author_email, comment_date, comment_content, comment_approved, comment_type, comment_parent
    FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_date > '".$date_lookup."' ";
$new_comments = $wpdb->get_results($sql);
print_r( $new_comments );