[Support request] Change post status to Draft based on date in custom field

Hi team,

I’ve been struggling with this issue for a while. I have a custom post type (CPT) event, and I need to display the upcoming events only. I don’t want past events to accumulate and ‘clog’ the website for visitors.

Fernando graciously helped me with a code snippet to filter a GB Pro Query Loop, but I realized that it was only a partial answer. The past events still show up in several Archive pages (or direct URL linked from outside). So instead of filtering them at the Query Loop level, I figured it’s much cleaner to remove them from public view entirely.

So I inquired into changing the Status of a post from “Published” to “Draft” based on a date from a custom field, e.g. event_end_date. After multiple attempts, I am working with the code snippet below, but it’s still not working for whatever reason. Now I’m wondering if the snippet is conflicting with any of the theme. I’m using GP Premium.

// expire events based on date field.
if (!wp_next_scheduled('hol_expire_events')){
  wp_schedule_event(time(), 'daily', 'hol_expire_events'); // this can be hourly, twicedaily, or daily
}

add_action('hol_expire_events', 'hol_expire_events_function');

function hol_expire_events_function() {
    $today = date('Y-m-d');
    $args = array(
        'post_type' => array('event'), // post types you want to check
        'posts_per_page' => -1 
    );
    $posts = get_posts($args);
    foreach($posts as $p){
        $expiredate = get_field('event_end_date', $p->ID, false, false); // get the raw date from the db
        if ($expiredate) {
            if($expiredate < $today){
                $postdata = array(
                    'ID' => $p->ID,
                    'post_status' => 'draft'
                );
                wp_update_post($postdata);
            }
        }
    }
}

I’ll add that I suspected it may not work due to the date format. Although I don’t know how to check whether it’s the culprit, I did make sure that the custom field outputs Y-m-d.

I was also wondering if maybe it’s a cron-related issue, so I installed the WP Crontrol plugin and I’m able to see that the cron is running hol_expire_events_function(), although it says it’s running hourly, and I would expect it daily based on the snippet.

Thank you for any help.