Meta Query failing to build a proper SQL Query

[peshkohacka]

I was tryin' to get meta working and i was wondering why no results were returned until i found that the query is actually invalid:

SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS  *
FROM posts  INNER JOIN term_relationships ON (ID = term_relationships.object_id) INNER JOIN postmeta ON (ID = postmeta.post_id) 
WHERE 1=1  AND ( term_relationships.term_taxonomy_id IN (1) ) AND post_type = 'post' AND (post_status = 'publish') AND ( (postmeta.meta_key = 'time' AND  ) GROUP BY ID ORDER BY post_date DESC LIMIT 0, 10

As you can see the meta query only inputs the meta_key and not the meta value/compare operator and as such the query ends up invalid.

This is how the query is getting called:

$args = array(
        'category_name' => 'customcat',
        'post_status' => 'publish',
        'meta_key' => 'time',
        'meta_value' => '135784684',
        'meta_type' => 'numeric',
        'meta_compare' => 'NOT BETWEEN'
    );
$posts = new WP_Query($args);

According to the ​documentation, the string "NOT BETWEEN" is not one of the supported comparison operators.

Try rewriting as a meta_query, which has been available since 3.1 and which does allow "NOT BETWEEN" as the comparison string.

i tried both as single meta_* array keys, or a single meta_query array. Both doesn't work. Although if i tried another logic operator like < it works.

NOT BETWEEN requires an array for the value:

$args = array(
        'category_name' => 'customcat',
        'post_status' => 'publish',
        'meta_key' => 'time',
        'meta_value' => array( 1, 1000 ),
        'meta_type' => 'numeric',
        'meta_compare' => 'NOT BETWEEN'
    );
$posts = new WP_Query($args);

Actually, I guess we could issue a warning, as it's pretty hard to figure out what's going on.