Question

this is some basic IF THEN statement stuff but I’m a coding newbie so I’m hoping someone can throw me a bone :-).

I have several posts that have a custom date field. I want to:

1) loop through all those posts and evaluate whether the date fields from everyone of the posts are in the past. If so, I want to display the special message.

2) If just one of the posts is in the past I want to keep evaluating until the end of all posts in the query are reached.

3) If even one post with a date that is in the future is found I have some more content to display from that post instead of the special message.

Currently, the special message is only showing up when the item in the loop has no post content at all. I was also able to get it to return the message after each post was evaluated but then I got a special message for each post evaluated, and I just want to get one message even at any point any one of the posts returns true.

My current code is this:

                        <?php

                        $parent = get_cat_name($category[0]->category_parent);
                        $cur_cat = $cur_cat_slug; 
                        $cur_date = current_time('timestamp',0);

                        echo $cur_cat_name;

                        ?>
                    </div>

                    <div class=dates>
                        <?php

                        $categoryvariable=$category; // assign the variable as current category
                        $query= 'cat=' . $cur_cat_id. '&posts_per_page=100&meta_key=date_value&orderby=meta_value&order=ASC&meta_compare=>=&meta_value=$cur_date'; // concatenate the query
                        query_posts($query); // run the query
                        if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();
                        $date_value = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'date_value', true);
                        if ($date_value>=$cur_date)
                            {
                        ?> 
                            <a class=dates-link href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>">
                            <li><?php echo date("D, n/j/Y, g:ia", get_post_meta($post->ID, 'date_value', true)); ?> - <?php $key="course_endtime"; echo get_post_meta($post->ID, $key, true); ?>
                            </a>
                        <div class=info>
                            <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=3 border=0>
                                <tr>
                                    <td valign=top><img src="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/images/i.jpg"></td>
                                    <td>Click any date for more info about a course and to register online.</td>
                                </tr>
                            </table>
                        </div>
                        <?php
                            } 

                        endwhile; else:

                        ?>

                        <div class=course-content>Sorry, no courses are currently scheduled. See <a href="http://dynamictactical.org/courses/" style="color:#000000; text-decoration:underline;">Course Calendar</a> for all upcoming DTT courses.</div>
                        <? endif;
                        wp_reset_query();?>

Answer 1

Here’s my little bone:
Use a boolean flag to determine whether or not you need to display the special message, and display the message only after the loop.
Do something like this:

 Set $specialmessage = true;

before the loop.
Then, inside the loop, when you find a post more recent than the date you’re testing against, set it to false and stick the_content in a holder. You can use break to exit the loop if you want.Then,

if($specialmessage)
     echo 'special message'
else
     echo the_content_placeholder.

Not a coding expert, but my best advice.