Order by custom field date with ASC order

Question

I've found several similar question but none of them explains why the below is giving me nothing with ASC order. It works with DESC.

Basically it's a query that should list posts where the custom field values are equal or greater to the current date, then arrange it in reversed order, so the first post should be a post that's custom field are the closest the the current date.

<?php query_posts($query_string . '&showposts=4&order=ASC&post_type=custompost&meta_key=mydate&orderby=meta_value'); ?>
    <?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
    <?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

        <?php $todays_date = date("Y/m/j"); ?>
        <?php $today = strtotime($todays_date); ?>
        <?php $exp_date = get_post_meta('mydate'); ?>
        <?php $expiration_date = strtotime($exp_date); ?>
        <?php if ($expiration_date >= $today) { ?>

            <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" rel="bookmark" title="<?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a>

    <?php } else { ?>
    <?php };?>

<?php endwhile; ?>
<?php else : ?>
<?php endif; ?> 

Also, I've tried many different queries but none of them worked, the above script is the latest I have.

Answer 1

With some more googling:

<?php
$today = date("Y/m/j");
query_posts(array(
'post_type' => 'custompost',
'posts_per_page' => 4,
'meta_key' => 'mydate',
'orderby' => 'meta_value',
'order' => 'ASC',
    'meta_query' => array(
        array(
           'key' => 'mydate',
           'meta-value' => $value,
           'value' => $today,
           'compare' => '>=',
           'type' => 'CHAR'
       )
)
));
if (have_posts()) :
while (have_posts()) : the_post();
?>
    <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" rel="bookmark" title="<?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a>

<?php endwhile; ?>
<?php else : ?>
<?php endif; ?> 

I hope it will help others!

Answer 2

After searching multiple similar posts, I put a solution together from parts of various other SO posts, hopefully it can help somebody else.

I had a custom meta field called "date" (poor naming convention, I know), and this query shows all posts with a custom "date" meta field in the future, sorting by closest to today.

$args = array(
        'post_type' => 'training-course',
        'posts_per_page' => '-1',
        'meta_key' => 'date',
        'orderby' => 'meta_value',
        'order' => 'ASC',
        'meta_query' => array(
            array(
                'key' => 'date',
                'value' => date("YYmmdd"),
                'compare' => '<='
            )                   
         )
    );

Answer 3

For others referencing this question, there is also a built-in way of doing this that is simpler, you can use eventDisplay in your query with the values upcoming, past, or custom. Tribe Events documentation is a bit miserable so who knows what custom does. If you use tribe_get_events(), it assumes upcoming by default, and I believe certain queries are automatically hijacked to show upcoming.

Here is one that shows 4 upcoming events, ordered by start date, from near to the future.

array(
  'showposts' => 4,
  'post_type' => 'tribe_events',
  'orderby' => 'meta_value',
  'order' => 'ASC',
  'meta_key' => '_EventStartDate',
  'eventDisplay' => 'upcoming'
));