WP_Query() show posts that end later than today

Question

I have a query as follows:

$wp_query = new WP_Query( 
   'meta_key'     => 'end_date', 
   'meta_value'   => 'today', 
   'meta_compare' => '>=', 
   'post_type'    => 'vehicle' 
);

I want to show only those posts of the vehicle post type that have the meta key end_date which contains a date that is later than today's date.

How can this be accomplished?

Answer 1

First, your date format has to be in descending order from largest to smallest units, i.e.: year, month, day, hour, minute, second, etc., otherwise MySQL can't query or order on the field. In this example I use year - month - day:

$today = date( 'Y-m-d' );
$args = array(
    'post_type' => 'vehicle',
    'meta_query' => array(
        array(
            'key' => 'end_date',
            'value' => $today,
            'compare' => '>=',
            'type' => 'DATE'
        )
    )
):
$query = new WP_Query( $args );

Answer 2

WordPress added Date Queries in 3.7. So you could always try:

$today = date( 'Y-m-d' );
$args = array(
    'post_type' => 'vehicle',
    'date_query' => array(
        //set date ranges with strings!
        'after' => 'today',
        //allow exact matches to be returned
        'inclusive'         => true,
    ),
);
$query = new WP_Query( $args );

More on this can be found at https://codex.wordpress.org/Class_Reference/WP_Query#Date_Parameters