Display entries if Field Date is past Now

Question

I'm trying to make a upcoming and past event page. I can make an if statement for displaying the past or upcoming events but the problem is if I limit the amount of entries to be displayed I realised it is still going through the other entries (obviously) so it wont display anything. So I was looking for any filter of some kind to only display entries based on field value greater then other value.

Something in the range of:

{% for entry in craft.entries.section('event').limit(2).search('eventDate < now') %}
<!-- Past events go here -->
{% endfor %}

Answer 1

You can combine a for and if statement in twig, so you don't necessarily need to use search.

Something like this might get you a bit closer:

{% for entry in craft.entries.section('event') if entry.postDate < now %}
{# output your event here #}
{% endfor %}

It'll just output what meets the criteria if your if statement. The bonus is it doesn't mess with your loop variables either, so things like loop.index work out as you'd expect (or at least they have for me so far).

EDIT: Here's an alternate way of doing it, which neatens up the query and adds ordering...

{% set events = craft.entries({
    section:  'event',
    startDate:  '< ' ~ now,
    order: 'postDate desc'
}).find() %}

{% for event in events %}
...
{% endfor %}

Answer 2

Craft has changed since the above answer was given. The now object must be a part of the string, rather than concatenated as an object.

so instead of:

{% set futureEntries = craft.entries.section('events').dateAndTime('>= ' ~ now) %}

use:

{% set futureEntries = craft.entries.section('events').dateAndTime('>= now') %}