Query using custom field for event date not working

I think the problem is that your event dates are stored as Y-m-d without a time. strtotime will convert these as if they are ‘Y-m-d 00:00:00’ (zero hour, zero minute, zero seconds), whereas time() provides the actual hour, minute, and second.

So, if an event date is ‘2014-07-13’, strtotime will give 1405209600. Converting that back to a string will give ‘2014-07-13 00:00:00’.

Any actual time on that date will have a greater value. To have the compare work the way you want, try adding ‘ 23:59:59’ to the end of the custom meta date, like this:

$exp_date = strtotime(get_post_meta($post->ID,'event_date_end',true) . ' 23:59:59');

The ‘yymmdd’ format should work the same as ‘yyyy-mm-dd’, so there must be another problem. I’ll take another look.

Another possibility; the time() function returns GMT time, not local time. Try replacing time() with current_time(‘timestamp’).

Try changing this:

$eventdatestart = strtotime(get_post_meta($post->ID,'event_date_start',true));
?>

to this:

$eventdatestart = strtotime(get_post_meta($post->ID,'event_date_start',true));
      $startmonth = date('M', $eventdatestart);
      if ( $startmonth != $currmonth ) {
         $currmonth = $startmonth; ?>
         <div class="monthheader"><?php echo $startmonth; ?></div>
      <?php }
?>

What I have just noticed with this is if I have

'posts_per_page' => '-1'

Everything works correctly and all events show. However if I use

'posts_per_page' => '8'

i.e. to limit the amount of events I’d like to show then this doesn’t show any events.

Any ideas?

Thanks @vtxyzzy but that makes no difference.

Sorry for the delay in replying. Here’s the code with the infinite amount of posts showing (-1) but if I change that to 8, for example, then no posts show.

<div class="related-posts p-list cf">

<?php
// Get the posts
$myposts = get_posts( array(
	'post_type' => 'event',
	'meta_key' => 'event_date_start',
	'orderby' => 'meta_value_num',
	'order' => 'ASC',
	'posts_per_page' => '-1',
	'post__not_in' => array($post->ID),
));
 ?>
<?php foreach ( $myposts as $post ) : setup_postdata( $post );

$eventdate = get_post_meta($post->ID,'event_date_start',true);
$eventdateend = get_post_meta($post->ID,'event_date_end',true);
$eventnumdays = get_post_meta($post->ID,'event_number_of_days',true);

$today = current_time('timestamp');
   if( get_field('event_number_of_days') ) {
          $exp_date = strtotime(get_post_meta($post->ID,'event_date_end',true) . ' 23:59:59');
   } else {
          $exp_date = strtotime(get_post_meta($post->ID,'event_date_start',true) . ' 23:59:59');
   }
if ($today <= $exp_date) {

$eventdatestart = strtotime(get_post_meta($post->ID,'event_date_start',true));
      $startdate = date('d', $eventdatestart);
      $startmonth = date('F', $eventdatestart);
      $startyear = date('Y', $eventdatestart);
?>
<div class="block">
<a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" title="<?php the_title() ?>">
<div class="image">
<div class="meta-date">
<div class="date"><?php echo $startdate; ?> <?php echo $startmonth; ?></div>
</div>
<?php the_post_thumbnail('medium', array('class' => 'medium')); ?>
</div>
<div class="details">
<h2 class="title"><?php the_title() ?></h2>
<?php the_excerpt(); ?>
</div>
</a>
</div>
<?php } endforeach; wp_reset_postdata();?>
<?php wp_reset_query(); ?>

</div>