Channel Field Date: Ignore timestamp during comparisons

Question

I have a channel field named start of campaign and one named end of campaign. I want to make do a conditional that says if today is equal to or later than the start of campaign AND today is before the end of the campaign then do something.

But what I've noticed is if you use %U for formatting it includes the time the entry was created which means the date range is more like 1/1/13 1:13PM -> 1/5/13 1:13PM when what I really want is 1/1/13 12:00AM -> 1/5/13 11:59PM

{if '{start_of_campaign format="%U"}' <= '{current_time format="%U"}' AND '{end_of_campaign format="%U"}' > '{current_time format="%U"}'}

That is what I am currently using but that cant be accurate right?

Answer 1

I usually use the following format for dates comparisons

{if '{start_of_campaign format="%Y%m%d"}' <= '{current_time format="%Y%m%d"}' AND '{end_of_campaign format="%Y%m%d"}' > '{current_time format="%Y%m%d"}'}

That should give you numbers that can easily be compared.

Answer 2

I was unable to get Lisa's method to compare properly when it came to different years. I did find this example which seems to be resolving correctly:

{if "{current_time format='%Y-%m-%d - %H:%i:%s'}" > "2010-04-03 - 17:00:00" }
code
{/if}

compare dates

Answer 3

Instead of using %U - you can build out the format you want yourself:

format="%n/%j/%y"