How do I set up event listing & detail pages with entry post dates that are in the future?

Question

I'm struggling to set up a listing template and a detail template which will display "event" entries with post date set in the future. I keep getting a 404 error on the detail page. How do I set up Craft & templates to show future dated entries on a listing and detail page?

Answer 1

STEP ONE:
Create an "Events" section in Craft and uncheck "Entries in this section have their own URLS".

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STEP TWO:
Create your listing page and use ".status('pending')" to have CRAFT return only future dated entries. Also use ".order('postDate')" to have Craft order entries so that the next future dated entry is the first in the list:

{% set entries = craft.entries.section("events").order('postDate').status('pending') %}

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STEP THREE:
In the listing template, you need to manually build the URL to the event's detail page:

<a href="/events/{{ entry.slug }}">{{ entry.title }}</a>

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STEP FOUR:
Set up a custom Route to tell Craft which template to load for the URL pattern you're using in STEP THREE.

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STEP FIVE:
Code your event's detail page template to grab the entry's slug from the URL and query the DB to get the right entry.

{% set slug = craft.request.getSegment(2) %}
{% set entry = craft.entries.section("events").slug(slug).status('live', 'pending', 'expired').find()%}
{% for entry in entry %}
    <h1>{{ entry.title }}</h1>
{% endfor %}

NOTE: I've set the code sample in STEP FIVE to use .status('live', 'pending', 'expired') to show return these types of entries on my event detail page. You can use .status(null) to return ANY/ALL entries on the event detail page... or you can use .status('pending') if you only want future dated events to show and all others to return a 404. This is 100% up to you and based on your project requirements.

Answer 2

A better/easier route would be to just create custom Date/Time fields that store the event start and end dates. Entries’ Post and Expiry dates are meant to define when the entry should be visible on the front end; they are not meant to be part of the entry’s content.

Answer 3

As Brandon wrote, I just created a date field {{eventDate}} and then just search based on if the eventDate was later than NOW in the section named Events.

{% set events = craft.entries.find({section:'events', eventDate : ">= " ~ now.w3cDate() , order:'eventDate'}) %}
    {% for entry in events %}
        <p>{{ entry.eventDate.format('D j M') }}, {{ entry.eventName }}</p>
    {% endfor %}

or use this format:

{% set events = craft.entries.find({
    section: 'events',
    eventDate: '>= ' ~ now.w3cDate(),
    order: 'eventDate asc'
}) %}
    {% for entry in events %}
        <p>{{ entry.eventDate.format('D j M') }}, {{ entry.eventName }}</p>
    {% endfor %}