How to get the post publish date outside the loop?

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The question:

I need to pull out the post publish date in order to make the post post auto expire. The thing is I can’t get the right publish date.

Here is my code:

 global $wpdb;

$post_ids = $wpdb->get_results( "SELECT ID FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_status ='publish'" );

foreach($post_ids as $id){

      $postdate = get_the_date("Y-m-d",$id ); //here is what I can figure out
       .......
      ......etc
}

When I echo the $postdate, it come out with a wrong date. Not the date that exist in the wp_posts table.

How can I get the date properly?

The Solutions:

Below are the methods you can try. The first solution is probably the best. Try others if the first one doesn’t work. Senior developers aren’t just copying/pasting – they read the methods carefully & apply them wisely to each case.

Method 1

get_the_date must be used inside the Loop. For outside the loop use get_the_time.

$posts = get_posts(array('numberposts'=>-1)); //Get all published posts
foreach ($posts as $post){
    echo get_the_time('Y-m-d', $post->ID); //Echos date in Y-m-d format.
}

Consider replacing 'Y-m-d' in this example with get_option('date_format') as this will display the date as per your date format setting in wp-admin.

Method 2

You can use get_post() or get_post_field() for this, both work outside the loop.

$post_object = get_post($id);
$post_date = date( 'F jS, Y', strtotime( $post_object->post_date ) );

A full list of values returned by get_post:

WP_Post Object
(
    [ID] =>
    [post_author] =>
    [post_date] => 
    [post_date_gmt] => 
    [post_content] => 
    [post_title] => 
    [post_excerpt] => 
    [post_status] =>
    [comment_status] =>
    [ping_status] => 
    [post_password] => 
    [post_name] =>
    [to_ping] => 
    [pinged] => 
    [post_modified] => 
    [post_modified_gmt] =>
    [post_content_filtered] => 
    [post_parent] => 
    [guid] => 
    [menu_order] =>
    [post_type] =>
    [post_mime_type] => 
    [comment_count] =>
    [filter] =>
)

Method 3

Some Modern soultions

Solution One

<?php echo get_the_date('j F Y', get_the_ID()) ?>

Solution Two

<?php the_time(get_option('date_format')) ?>

Method 4

try like this

$getPosts = $wpdb->get_results( 
"
    SELECT ID, post_date,post_title
    FROM $wpdb->posts
    WHERE post_status = 'publish' 
        AND post_type = 'post'
        ORDER BY ID ASC
    "
);

foreach ( $getPosts as $myPost ) {
    $id = $myPost->post_date;
    echo $myPost->ID.' | '. $myPost->post_title.' | '. get_the_date("Y-m-d",$id ).'<br />';
}

edit

get_the_time Returns the time of the current post for use in PHP. It does not display the time. To display the time of a post, use the_time(). This tag must be used within The Loop.

get_the_date The get_the_date template tag retrieves the date the current $post was written. Unlike the_date() this tag will always return the date. Modify output with ‘get_the_date’ filter.

Am I missing something here?


All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0

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