Posts query including meta and greater than date - wordpress

Question

I'm struggling to get a working solution with this wp_query. I currently have some custom settings which are assigned to posts, one is whether or not the post is 'featured' and the second is a date and time for the post to end (no longer display in the results). I have the query working with the feature, but just need to work this end date into it, here is the query working find with the 'featured':
WP_Query('meta_key=skyali_feature&showposts=4&orderby=post_date');
The end date is set in the wp_postmeta table where meta_key is 'the_date' and the meta_values look like this '05/16/2013 05:24'. I would like to edit the above query where if 'the_date' has been set posts are only included if the 'the_date' is greater that todays date and time.
Here is my failed attempt:
WP_Query(
'meta_key=skyali_feature&meta_key=the_date&meta_compare=>=&meta_value='
.date('d/m/Y H:i')
.'&showposts=4&orderby=post_date&orderby=the_date'
);

Answer 1

I had to do something very similar recently and ended up needing to use the meta_query property instead. You'll want to do something like this:
$today = date('Ymd');
$args = array(
'post_type' => 'post',
'posts_per_page' => '4',
'meta_key' => 'the_date',
'meta_query' => array(
array(
'key' => 'skyali_feature'
),
array(
'key' => 'the_date',
'value' => $today,
'compare' => '>='
)
),
'orderby' => 'meta_value_num',
'order' => 'ASC'
);
$your_custom_query = new WP_Query($args);
A few notes...
I only needed to filter by date in my example, but it looks like you'll need to do date/time in yours. (You can just adjust the first line for the $today variable using the format you wish).
Use posts_per_page instead of showposts. showposts is deprecated.
Notice that I have included the meta_key twice (once at the top level of the array and once as an element in the meta_query array. There's a known bug where you can't sort your results by the key if you don't include it this way. I fought that one for a while too!
Hope this helps, have fun!
[edit] Forgot to add your skyali_feature key back into the array.

Answer 2

for people using the advanced custom field plugin with a date data type, this is what you need for dates greater or equal than today:
$today = date('Ymd');
$args = array(
'post_type' => 'post',
'meta_key' => 'end-date',
'meta_query' => array(
array(
'key' => 'end-date'
),
array(
'key' => 'end-date',
'value' => $today,
'compare' => '>='
)
),
'orderby' => 'meta_value',
'order' => 'ASC'
);
$your_custom_query = new WP_Query($args);

Answer 3

for people using Custom metadata manager you'll find that a datepicker field is stored as timestamp.
So in a similar case the above example isn't working and you may have php sort out the value you need to compare against. And the timestamp for a day earlier at 23:59:59 it'll do the job:
$yesterday = strtotime('yesterday 23:59:59');
$args = array(
'post_type' => 'post',
'meta_key' => 'end-date',
'meta_query' => array(
array(
'key' => 'end-date'
),
array(
'key' => 'end-date',
'value' => $yesterday,
'compare' => '>='
)
),
'orderby' => 'meta_value',
'order' => 'ASC'
);
$your_custom_query = new WP_Query($args);
If you also want to take account of the timezone setting for the blog use current_time() as in the following example:
$now = current_time('timestamp');
$yesterday = mktime(23, 59, 59, date('n',$now), date('j',$now)-1);