Integrated Event Calendar

HandyRandyIndy

@mis-one: I agree that it is important to be able to associate calendar events and discussion topics. I was meaning that there are two different ways to approach it - event centric and discussion centric. My vote would be to focus on the calendaring by having a feature-rich implementation of scheduling events with the ability to have a discussion topic automagically created for the event, rather than focusing on the discussion and providing the ability to associate an event with it. However, if it is done with elegance and efficiency the two approaches will be almost indistinguishable - the only real difference being that the second approach requires a discussion and the first approach does not. By the way, did you have any particular one of the "many php calendar scripts" in mind? I did a bunch of looking and didn't find any free ones that seemed to fit the need. Any help here would be much appreciated because I hate re-inventing the wheel.

MySchizoBuddy

I'm testing Pear:Calendar. it spits out year, month, weeks and days as an array. i will use that for the userinterface. So i tell it to give me weeks and days from month of May, it will return an array of dates and day, that i can use to make different calendar views. So far it looks like a nice starting point.

For reoccurring event, get the code from PHP iCalendar, their code seems to be the simplest.
Reoccurring code from WebCalendar is very complicated but feature complete. U can literally create any type of reoccurring event possible in WebCalendar 1.1 Dev version. All that power makes the code very long and complicated. the event form to select reoccurring event has close to million options. I doubt anyone needs that much power, So i'll get the code from Php iCalendar.

Everything else build from scratch
Using 30boxes interface as guideline

there won't be any support for exporting or importing iCal files.

mis-one

@MySchizoBuddy- Now all we need is your paypal address :)

spidy

I think a Calendar plugin like this should be a of the vanilla install! This is a really great idea and thanks to skube for pushing on this idea and MySchizoBuddy for working on it. I have this as a must have for our forum. Keep up the great work guys...

MySchizoBuddy

Scenario

Job Recruitment Event
Thursday after Noon
Friday before Noon
Same event, same Event description, same everything. except time.
So it has to be 2 separate events. Actually they have to be duplicate events

Since they are two events it should not however, have two separate discussions. both events should point to same discussion
Considering this which makes more sense.

1) Discussions with attached events.
2) Events with attached Discussions.

one event cannot have 2+ discussions
one discussion can have 2+ events

HandyRandyIndy

To me, events with attached discussions makes more sense. When an event is created a new discussion could be created and the event linked to it, or the event could be attached to an existing discussion. A third possibility would be to have an event without an attached discussion. Could be used to cover just about any calendar event to discussion relationship (one-to-one, many-to-one, one-to-none, none-to-one). The only relationships left out would be one-to-many and many-to-many, which I do not see as having any great practical use here, and perhaps unneccesarily complex to implement. Will it be difficult to build a control that will allow the user to easily select an existing discussion to attach a new event to?

MySchizoBuddy

its not hard, i will just store the Discussion ID and Event ID in the database
what i need a UI for attaching existing discussions. How will u find the discussion that u want to attach to the event?

mis-one

What about how the Poll extension works where in the sidepanel there is a link to "Attach an event to this discussion" ?

skube

Why can't you simply edit the first post in the discussion to attach an event (i.e. second screenshot). This is similar in functionality to changing the title of a discussion.

mis-one

Well, what if you have editing turned off? I had to do so as my users were abusing it, i.e. editing posts then regretting what they said thus messing up the entire discussion.

PRSop2000

I would KILL for this add-on as I wouldn't have to link to an external calendar for events.

HandyRandyIndy

Skube, I see the problem coming in when you want to attach an already existing event to the discussion. The user will need some way to choose from existing events. What I mean is a way to browse for an existing event to attach to the discussion. If they select "Attach an Event" and want to use an existing event, they will need to specify which event they want. Or if you were attaching an existing discussion to an event you would need a way to select the right discussion to attach to the event.

Either way it doesn't look easy to me (but I'm a newbie at PHP!). That goes for the idea that mis-one put forward too - the user still needs to be able to choose which event to use. So some manner of browsing through the events and/or discussions and allowing the user to select which one will be used to attached to will need to be developed. That is, if the author chooses to go farther than just being able to create an event to be associated with a discussion at the time of the creation of the discussion. (That would be a good starting point, at least.)

mis-one

Any update on this MySchizoBuddy?

MySchizoBuddy

mis-one not yet. i was busy finally releasing the blog extension. now its officially finished and I can move on to other projects

OK need a list of permissions
Add/Edit Events - Which roles can add/edit events
Remove event - Which roles can remove any events, for admins so they can make changes to any event or remove any event

Users cannot remove an event. just like users cannot remove Discussions

what else?

lech

Considering that it's a calendar, you may want a condition for users to mark things as "canceled" events since they can't technically remove items. This may also work best off a freshly created table within the DB so you can simply link discussions into that table to make things slightly easier to manage.

mis-one

Lech - Couldn't they just edit the event if it was canceled?

skube

I guess whomever entered the event can edit it, but no one else (aside from admins)?

ThaRiddla

If you wanted to allow users to add events, perhaps they should go to an approval queue for mods/admins?

lech

mis-one, they could, but if an event was canceled it would still appear as active. This way instead of deleting both the discussion and event like an admin can, it could simply be marked as canceled then simply unlinked from the calendar.

mis-one

Oh okay, yes that makes sense!