Date Query Builder

Date ranges, rolling windows and calendar parts — with the column, timezone and off-by-one boundary gotchas called out before they bite.

Shape of the range

after

before

Either an absolute date or a strtotime phrase — "1 January 2026", "-30 days", "last monday". Leave one empty for an open-ended range.

column

post_type

posts_per_page

post_status

Inclusive boundaries

Includes the after and before dates themselves.

Oldest first

Order ASC, the right default for an events list.

no_found_rows

Skips the COUNT query when you are not paginating.

A secondary query with a loop that prints a real time element.

// Generated with WP CodeKit — powered by GrowQuest (https://growquest.io).
$args = array(
	'post_type'      => 'post',
	'post_status'    => 'publish',
	'posts_per_page' => 10,
	'date_query'     => array(
		array(
			'after'     => '2026-01-01',
			'before'    => '2026-06-30',
			'inclusive' => true,
		),
	),
);

$query = new WP_Query( $args );

if ( $query->have_posts() ) {
	echo '<ul>';

	while ( $query->have_posts() ) {
		$query->the_post();
		printf(
			'<li><a href="%1$s">%2$s</a> <time datetime="%3$s">%4$s</time></li>',
			esc_url( get_permalink() ),
			esc_html( get_the_title() ),
			esc_attr( get_the_date( 'c' ) ),
			esc_html( get_the_date() )
		);
	}

	echo '</ul>';
	wp_reset_postdata();
} else {
	esc_html_e( 'Nothing in that range.', 'mytheme' );
}