Limit display of Channel Field based on date

Question

I am asking myself if there is a way of displaying a Channel Field based on date. I have a dedicated channel for the site's indexpage and randomly the client wants to display announcements eg for sweepstakes and the such.

Now I could put up a Field and a P&T Switch but I would like to have some kind of date logic so that the announcement disappears at a given time in the future.

Or should I really create a brandnew Channel just for announcements and pull those in the indexpage template? I can see the advantage of having sort of an Announcement archive then but it also feels a bit clumsy and overkill.

Any ideas on how to best do this logically, technically and best suited for client use?

Thanks and Cheers!

Marc

Answer 1

You could create an announcement field along with 2 date fields (start and end dates).

{if current_time > announcement_start_time && current_time < announcement_end_time}
  {announcement}
{/if}

Answer 2

Two things to look at:

Have your client set an "Expiration Date" on the entries. If show_expired="" is not set to "yes" on the entries tag, then these entries will automatically stop showing on the website at the set time/date.

Use the start_on="" parameter to set a start date for the entries tag. Only entries from that date forward to present will show. To set a dynamic start date, you'll need to use PHP like this:

<?php
    $start_time = $this->EE->localize->decode_date('%Y-%m-%d %H:%i', $this->EE->localize->now - 86400);
?>
{exp:channel:entries channel="{my_weblog}" limit="5" sort="desc" start_on="<?php echo $start_time; ?>"}

Answer 3

Thanks Anna and Jason. I managed to solve this issue with Matrix in the end like this:

{if cell_1 >= current_time}
    {cell_2}
{/if}

Where cell_1 is a "Date" Cell Type and cell_2 is a "Text" Cell Type.

Since Jason's answer is correct and not relies on using third-party Modules I'll mark it as the accepted answer.