Reply To: A point on Date fields in WP_Query

• feyfey

• January 24, 2019 at 9:33 am

Hi Nox,

For your first question : the ‘NOT EXISTS’ operator means the metadata isn’t set or is set to null. So to understand why this operator doesn’t work in your case you can try this in the single_post.php (just to testing it):

if( ! in_array( 'date_sale', get_post_custom_keys( $post_id ) ) ) {
Echo ‘The metadata isn’t set, the NOT EXISTS operator must works’; 
} else {
$my_sale_date_meta = get_post_meta($post_id, ‘date_sale’);
If(is_null($my_sale_date_meta)){
Echo ‘The metadata is null, the NOT EXISTS operator must works’;
} else {
Echo ‘The metadata is set and not null, the NOT EXISTS operator can\’t work’;
}
}

If you echo “… the NOT EXISTS operator must works” that’s means another part of your code make it wrong, else, it’s perfeclty normal it’s not working in your case because even if your field is empty the metadata is set and not null.

For your second issue, you have to process some testing too : Are you sure the metadata date_sale can be compared to you $date_limit ? Use the get_post_meta() to print your date_sale, but it’s possible that your date_sale return a string which can’t be compared to a DateTime. In that case you must convert your date_limit to a comparable format

Hope it’s help.