conditional statment to display all entries that are from today and forward

Question

Have

• events channel
• have 10 entries
• have a date field called event_start_date

Desire - display only up coming events in asc order

List

• 2016-12-06
• 2016-11-01
• 2016-10-24
• 2016-05-30
• 2016-09-12
• 2016-05-15
• 2016-05-02
• 2016-03-29
• 2016-03-01
• 2016-02-08

Code:

{exp:channel:entries channel="events" orderby="event_start_date" sort="asc"}
  {if {event_start_date format='%Y-%m-%d'} >= {current_time format='%Y-%m-%d'}}
    {event_start_date format='%Y-%m-%d'}<br>
  {/if}
{/exp:channel:entries}

Results:

2016-02-08
2016-03-01
2016-03-29
2016-05-02
2016-05-15
2016-05-30
2016-09-12
2016-10-24
2016-11-01
2016-12-06

Desired

2016-05-15
2016-05-30
2016-09-12
2016-10-24
2016-11-01
2016-12-06

What am i doing wrong?

Final working code:

{exp:channel:entries channel="events" orderby="event_start_date" sort="asc" search:event_start_date=">={current_time}"}
    {event_start_date format='%Y-%m-%d'}<br>
{/exp:channel:entries}

Answer 1

Try using the search parameter - https://docs.expressionengine.com/v2/add-ons/channel/channel_entries.html#search-field-name

search:event_start_date=">={current_time}"

How are you storing your date field? unix, mysql??

Answer 2

It would be much simpler if you were to use the EE default {entry_date} that way you could use start_on= with show_future_entries="yes":

{exp:channel:entries channel="events" start_on="{current_time}" orderby="date" show_future_entries="yes"}
...
{/exp:channel:entries}

As per the documentation

Your current use of a custom field will return, lets say 30 entries and then you'll subsequently have to query, each of those 30 entries, one at a time, if this fields value is greater then the current date - all of which is an expensive DB/EE operation.

PS. Your conditional, is trying to compare a string that includes operators it should be just numbers. Try removing the format= part from your tag.