Return WordPress posts for today or the last day there was posts

gistfile1.txt

global $wpdb;

	/**
	 * Get todays date and the last post date to compare
	 */
	$query_date = date( 'Y-m-d' );
	$last_date = $wpdb->get_var( "SELECT DATE(MAX(post_date)) FROM {$wpdb->posts} WHERE post_status = 'publish' AND post_type = 'post' LIMIT 1" );

	// Check if the last post is from today or not
	if ( $last_date != $query_date ) {
		$query_date = $last_date;
	}

	// Build the query
	$args = array(
		'date_query' => array(
			array(
				'year' => date( 'Y', strtotime( $query_date ) ),
				'month' => date( 'n', strtotime( $query_date ) ),
				'day' => date( 'j', strtotime( $query_date ) ),
			)
		),
		'posts_per_page' => -1,
	);

	$p = new WP_Query( $args );

	wp_send_json( $p->posts );