Find next event

Question

I'm trying to find the next event after today (now) from a series of entries. This code however outputs all upcoming events after today but I'm just looking for the first (next) event.

Any help is appreciated

{% set nextEvent =  craft.events.events.find() %}
{% for entry in nextEvent %}
    {% if entry.startDate > now %}
    <span class="text-primary">{{ entry.title }}</span><br>
    {{ entry.startDate|date('d F Y ') }}
    {% endif %}
{% endfor %}

Answer 1

When you are setting nextEvent, you can limit only events that are upcoming and only output the first result you get back like so:

.startDate('>= ' ~ now).first()

So you can take that and update your code like so:

{% set nextEvent = craft.entries.section('events').order('startDate').startDate('>= ' ~ now).first() %}

{% if nextEvent %}
    foo
{% endif %}

I have assumed you have a section called 'Event's until we get some clarification as to what craft.events.events is.

Answer 2

P&T's events plugin available on GitHub http://github.com/pixelandtonic/Events is actually not meant to be used at all. It was just a demo to show the potential of custom element types!

I'd suggest to use a channel section for your events, and with the code Jamie provided you're already done figuring out how to find your "next event"! You could also collect events with a matrix field, if you have a need for an extra level of hierarchy and if that's still not enough you could have your events in a table in that matrix (using the "Super Table" plugin).

There's also two other plugins: "Events" and "Calendar", but I'm not sure if they are still under development and I'd probably stick to core Craft features (channels / matrix) for now.

Answer 3

To break a for loop you could have a variable and check against its value in your loop:

{% set breakLoop = false %}

{% for entry in nextEvent %}

    {% if (entry.startDate > now) and (breakLoop == false) %}
        {{ entry.startDate }}
        {% set breakLoop = true %}
    {% endif %}

{% endfor %}

Or – if you have a need to break loops more often – use the plugin "Break and Continue", that gives you a Twig tag for this:

{% for entry in nextEvent %}

    {% if entry.startDate > now %}
        {{ entry.startDate }}
        {% break %}
    {% endif %}

{% endfor %}