Event Archive by Month

Question

Ok short of a better solution here is what I’ve come up with:

<?php
   $today = date('Y-m-d', strtotime('-6 hours')); 
   query_posts(array(
      'post_type' => 'events', 'posts_per_page' => 99, 'meta_key' => 'event_date', 'orderby' => 'meta_value', 'order' => 'ASC', 
      'meta_query' => array(array(
         'key' => 'event_date',
         'meta-value' => $value, 
         'value' => $today, 
         'compare' => '>=', 
         'type' => 'CHAR'
       ))
   ));
   if (have_posts()) :
   while (have_posts()) : the_post();
?>

The above gets all events in future of todays date

<?php
    // http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3586384/wordpress-events-grouped-by-month
    // for each month output the month once 
    $eventdate = get_post_meta($post->ID, "event_date", true);
    if(!isset($currentMonth) || $currentMonth != date("m", strtotime($eventdate))){
    $currentMonth = date("m", strtotime($eventdate));

    //make the month to pass into the url
    $month = date("Y", strtotime($eventdate)).'-'.date("m", strtotime($eventdate));
    $monthname = date("F", strtotime($eventdate));
?>

Kick out the month name once if posts exist in that date and manipulate for output.

<li>
    <a href="https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/64362/<?php echo home_url("https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/" ); ?>whats-on-page/shows-by-month/?startdate=<?php echo($month); ?>-01&enddate=<?php echo($month); ?>-31&monthname=<?php echo ($monthname); ?>">
        <?php echo ($monthname); ?>
    </a>
</li>
<?php } ?>

Output the html so we have a li and link – link goes to a page using a custom page template which pulls the parameters passed in the URL into a meta query like below:

   $start = $_GET["startdate"];
   $end = $_GET["enddate"];
   $monthname = $_GET["monthname"];
   // gets info from URL

   query_posts(array(
      'post_type' => 'events', //query “events”
      'posts_per_page' => 10,
      'paged' => $paged,
      'meta_key' => 'event_date',
      'orderby' => 'meta_value',
      'order' => 'ASC', //sort in ascending order
        'meta_query' => array(
            array(
                'key' => 'event_date',
                'value' => array($start, $end),
                'compare' => 'BETWEEN',
                'type' => 'DATE'
            )
        ) // meta query between dates
   ));
   if (have_posts()) :
   while (have_posts()) : the_post();

So now I have a dynamic listing in the sidebar to link to a custom page template which filters by month, effectively recreating the post archive effect using a custom date field.

Sure I could probably create some URL rewrites to make this work with pretty URLs too but thats for another day.

Related Posts: