ExpressionEngine 3 Date Range

Question

I am trying to load entries based on a date range that is selected by the user. On the front end of the site I have two input fields, the start day and end day of the date range. In the control panel, I have a custom date field (shipping_date), which is the field that will be compared to the inputted range.

What I would like is to pass those two dates inputted by the user into the channel entries tag in order to limit the entries to only ones where the shipping_date field is between the inputted date range. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of entries so I do not want to load all of them and then do the sorting on the front end.

So I guess my question is two fold:

1. Can ExpressionEngine out of the box limit entries by a date range based on a custom date field? So far my research says this is not possible without an add-on (Low Search seems to be able to handle custom field date ranges)

2. How do I pass inputted data from the user into either the channel entries tag or a plugin's tag?

Thank you in advance for any help!

Answer 1

I'd suggest attempting to see if the start_on and stop_before parameters work for with Dynamic Parameters. Run a couple tests to see if this does not suit your needs or work first.

Dynamic Parameters Documentation

https://docs.expressionengine.com/v3/channel/dynamic_parameters.html

start_on documentation https://docs.expressionengine.com/v3/channel/channel_entries.html#start-on

stop_before documentation https://docs.expressionengine.com/v3/channel/channel_entries.html#stop-before

The next steps would be, if this does not suit your needs is to see if there is any module/add-on out their currently to handle more complex filtering like this. A site like https://devot-ee.com/

Out of the box, the EE channel entries tag is fairly linear and basic.

I typically write me own modules and use the Model service to query and filter front-end form submission input and return a custom tag pair. But this depends on your programming capabilities as well.

UPDATE

Sorry, I just remembered you said you're using a custom_field for the date, so out of the box the Dynamic Parameters will likely not work for you.

Please see if this post is helpful to you at all:

Show all entries from a given custom date field

Answer 2

For anyone who comes across this answer now, there is an update to search:numeric_field='' parameter to now include a range in EE4. So you can use this parameter with a custom date field to search by range if you're using EE4.

Here's an article discussing the update: https://expressionengine.com/blog/three-new-content-filters-in-expressionengine-4