General help

Jon,

This is all coming together very nicely indeed.  A personal note of thanks for everything you have done to make this valuable addition to Moodle a reality.  On the large calendar view at the top in your screenshot caption reads "Moodle Calendar."  Could this be set to <site_name> Calendar.  For my site it might be JLife Calendar, indicating the name on the front door link.

• Updated installation instructions and notes
• Updated code package (cal_dev.zip)
• Updated screenshots (see below)

1. styles.php: In answer to Grant McWilliams's last post on the other thread, my styles.php is no less than 30(!) CSS rules richer than a normal copy. Note: 30 new rules. Not 30 new classes!
2. Compatibility: Speaking of CSS... I 'm constantly testing this on Firebird 0.7 and IE6 SP1, both under Windows 2000. It all works like a charm. The only thing that I don't like is that Firebird's rounded borders from some blocks aren't drawn correctly. You can see this for example in my screenshot #3 for today. Anyone have any idea why? Also, if anyone can provide feedback in regard to compatibility with other browsers, please do so.
3. Heading: The site shortname is now displayed as the first heading (suggested by Brian Williams)
4. Popups from the mini monthly view: Since there is so much demand for this feature, it's going to happen. Tomorrow.
5. Layering of events from various sources: OK, this might also be useful. But before starting to work on it, I want to be sure that it's going to be used. So I want a little more input. Which screens should the filters be present in? And what kind of filters? How do you propose to maintain the filtering when the user uses another calendar link, or even a link which I have no control over? Should it (the filtering) be maintained at all in such a case?
   

1. Each day you get to see the names of the events that happen. You can also click on them to see all information available about this event.
2. Events with a duration are also shown until they expire, but they are dimmed and you cannot click on them. I wanted to make them unobtrusive, since they could very well fill up the calendar. They are always displayed after the day's new events.

1. Notice how there is a "start time" and "end time" for events with duration, while just "time" for events without.
2. The second event (which is what would be automatically set by the assignment module) has links for the course and module instance it belongs to.
3. The month's name, on top, is hyperlinked. This goes to the expanded month view.

1. See the hyperlinked "Calendar" up at the navigation bar, just below the site name? This is where it brings you.
   

1. Popups are done, and with them also the "event details" view. For now this is just a watered-down version of the day view, but maybe sometime in the future it will be expanded. For example, maybe it can have a different layout according to what kind of event it shows etc. You can see a screenshot of this, along with a popup, here.
2. Today I 'm not posting code, since I didn't find overLib in CVS (Martin? time lag?) so I had to wing it a little. There are also some loose ends that I 'd prefer to take care of, but I don't have time to do it today. And there really isn't any functional change other than popups.
   
3. During the weekend I probably won't be around an internet connection, so it's possible that next time I check in will be Monday.
4. Starting Monday, I 'll implement event filtering (I have a nice idea of how to do it), tie up the loose ends and begin to wrap the package up. The time I have available to work on this is slowly running out...
   

Jon,

Made a test Moodle installation tonite and installed Calender.... FANTASTIC.  Nice job on the instructions and I look forward to the next build.  Keep up the terrific work you are doing to make Moodle even greater than ever.    

• Event filtering by specific course (full month display only)
• Interface to add new events!
• Event editing (but not deleting... should this be allowed?)
  
• Full support for group events (heh... unless there's a bug somewhere )

• Are you planning to hook the calendar into the site's front page? 
  
  • That would be good for site-wide events, like holidays. 
• What part of the calendar code governs which side the calendar block is on?

I've just downloaded the moodle-latest.zip and followed the Installation instructions for the Calender, but I'm getting the following:

1- Module 'calendar' is not readable - check permissions.
2- when I try to turn editing on I get a blank page.
3- When I open a course that has Topic format I get Fatal error: Call to undefined function: calendar_print_side_blocks() in f:\phpdev5\www\moodle\course\format\topics\format.php on line 94

What could be wrong?!

IMPORTANT: I 'd also like to note that since Calendar is now in CVS, the links I 've posted above for the package contain code that is out of date. I don't know how often they will be updated (if at all).

So if you 'd like to work with it, please use CVS to get your copy. There is a web interface which allows read access for everyone, so that shouldn't be much trouble.

Hi Jon -

I'd like to propose a slight modification to your wonderful calendar application.

I use some custom view pages on my site, and I would like to use the mini-calendar on them as well. Right now, your 'calendar_print_side_blocks' assume that I am doing this from a 'view.php' file with a 'courseid' argument. That's not always the case on my site.

What I'd like to do is add an optional argument to 'calendar_print_side_blocks' called '$callstr'. If this argument is present, it would contain the procedure to call and any required arguments it needs. If it is set, 'calendar_print_side_blocks' would call 'calendar_top_controls' with a type 'custom' (instead of 'course'), and insert a 'callstr' argument into the $data array with the value of the '$callstr' argument.

This would allow me to use the same mini-calendar display on any page I choose and remove the responsibility of determining what to call from the calendar application.

The changes would look like this:

in calendar_print_side_blocks:

function calendar_print_side_blocks($callstr=null) {
...
if ($callstr) {
    echo calendar_top_controls('custom', array('callstr' => $callstr, 'm' => $_GET['cal_m'], 'y' => $_GET['cal_y']));
}
else {
    echo calendar_top_controls('course', array('id' => $course->id, 'm' => $_GET['cal_m'], 'y' => $_GET['cal_y']));
}
...

in calendar_top_controls:

...
case 'custom':
...
    $nextlink = calendar_get_link_tag('&gt;&gt;', $data['callstr'].'&amp;', 0, $nextmonth, $nextyear);
    $prevlink = calendar_get_link_tag('&lt;&lt;', $data['callstr'].'&amp;', 0, $prevmonth, $prevyear);
...

What do you think?

mike

Hi Jon -

I know you're working on this, and may have already fixed it, but I'm getting strange behaviour moving through months in the month display. When I try to go back to January from February, I am propelled into December. From there, I can't move forward to January; I stay in December.

I looked at the code, and it seems to have something to do with the line:

$date= usergetdate(calendar_gmmktime_check($m, 1, $y)); // Nominal datetime

in the 'calendar_show_month_detailed' procedure.

The '$m' argument is '1' and '$y' is 2004, but when they come back from the 'gmmktime' call in 'calendar_gmmktime_check' procedure, the time is now a time on Dec. 31, 2003. I'm guessing this is a time-zone issue?

If I change this call to: 'usergetdate(calendar_mktime_check($m, 1, $y))' everything seems to work.

(Similarly, in 'calendar_get_mini', making the same change fixes an issue I was having with the mini view).

Any thoughts?

mike