Displaying WordPress Future Posts

WordPress doesn’t include future posts on Blog, Archive, Widget or Single post pages. However that is logical. But yet if someone need to display future posts lists & also display future post on single post page, here is a solution.

Shortcode to display the list of future posts

function future_postlist_shortcode($atts)
{
    extract( shortcode_atts( array(
        'post_type' => 'post',
        'total'     => '-1',
        'order'     => 'DESC',
        'orderby'     => 'date',
    ), $atts ));


    $html  = '';
    $query = new WP_Query( array( 
        'order'         => $order,
        'orderby'         => $orderby,
        'post_type'         => $post_type,
        'post_status'         => 'future',
        'posts_per_page'    => $total
    ));

    if( $query->have_posts() ):
    $html .= '<ul>';
        while( $query->have_posts()) : $query->the_post();
        $html .= sprintf( 
            '<li><a href="%1$s">%2$s</a> - 
            <span title="will be available within %3$s">in %3$s</span></li>',
            get_permalink(),
            get_the_title(),
            human_time_diff( strtotime(get_post()->post_date), current_time('timestamp') )
        );
        endwhile;
    $html .= '</ul>';
    endif;

    return $html;
}
add_shortcode( 'future_postlist', 'future_postlist_shortcode' );

The shortcode supports few argument. Number of posts to show, Order & Orderby. You can use it like –

[future_postlist total='10' orderby='date' order='ASC']

Now, this should display list of future posts, with a human readable publishing time, ex: in 9 hours, and post title linked to post page. But the problem is, non loggedin user can not see future posts, and for that we will need some more code to add.

Display future posts for not loggedin user

On Single post page, non loggedin user do not see future posts. Here we will filter the condition and allow non loggedin user to see future post on Single post page.

add_filter( 'the_posts', 'myplugin_the_future_posts', 10, 2 );
function myplugin_the_future_posts( $posts, $query )
{
    global $wpdb;

    // We will skip if -
    // - there's already found posts 
    // - or it isn't a single post page
    // - or User is loggedin
    if( !empty($posts) || ! $query->is_singular() || is_user_logged_in() )
        return $posts;

    if( $post_name = $query->get('name') ){
        $post_type = $query->get('post_type') ? $query->get('post_type') : 'post';
        $post_status = 'future';
        $post_ID = $wpdb->get_var( $wpdb->prepare( "SELECT ID FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_name = %s AND post_type= %s AND post_status= %s", $post_name, $post_type, $post_status ) );
        if( $post_ID ){
            $posts = array( get_post($post_ID) );
        }
    }

    return $posts;
}

All of the above codes used here, you will need to add that on your plugin or within themes functions.php file.