Long ago in a program far, far away called pMachine, there was a quick, easy to set up Event Calendar capability. Since the death of pMachine, creating an Event Calendar—a really common part of community web sites—has become an study in frustration and a test for the practice of inner calm.

Please, please, please create a real, full-out event calendar module.

Having to read 6 different pieces of documentation including a wiki entry and assorted forum threads and then spend days debugging why the next and previous links don’t work and kluge together some PHP so I can list recurring or span multiple is not a valid program feature. It’s especially wrong that I can’t have an event list over multiple days without disappearing once the end of the event has past. Many times it’s useful for people to see what kinds of events have already taken place for an organization.

So please, given the amount of threads spent on discussing creating a basic, true calendar of events, develop a module.

Now back to wrestling with hacking something together for my non-profit client. See you in the tech support forum.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.  I’m familiar with the pMachine calendar, and it was so easy to set up and use.  If only I had more know-how, I’d set one up myself, and even create a module for it, but I think this would be better out-of-the-box.  It really is a feature that many people would benefit from.  I really hope to see it in 2.0. 

For this and some other common EE-uses it could be a very helpfull idea if someone (Ellislab?) put some tutorial on the wiki with accompanying templates and instructions. For some, It is more easy to learn EE by looking at sample code.

GDmac - 03 October 2007 02:29 AM

For this and some other common EE-uses it could be a very helpfull idea if someone (Ellislab?) put some tutorial on the wiki with accompanying templates and instructions. For some, It is more easy to learn EE by looking at sample code.

That, at least, has been done.

Yes, Leslie, and I thank everyone, particularly Sue Crocker, who has provided the help. 

But none of these solutions create a true Event Calendar which effectively—and intelligently—handles recurring and date/time-spanning events. All of the solutions discussed and provided are actually kludges, especially the case of the disappearing multi-day event (there are times when keeping past events listed on the site are desirable and necessary). This was a part of the pMachine calendar and is really something that is a major hole in EE’s features. And a module that I would expect to be fairly easy for EE’s PHP aces given the sheer quantity of times it’s been done in everything from Basic to C to Perl to every other programming language.

I didn’t say the wiki write up provided what you’re asking for guerrilla. I was pointing out to GDmac that what he was looking for exists, along with code examples.

As to “fairly easy”, that is never, ever the case with anything. Designing a calendar that meets the needs of thousands of people is not easy, no matter what code libraries may exist. People complain about Google’s calendar solution, Basecamp’s etc… its one of those things that is impossible to get “just right” for everyone. I think you are waxing a bit nostalgic about pMachine Pro’s “event calendar” because it certainly wasn’t a “true event calendar”, at least by today’s standards.

I’m also not arguing the validity of the feature request, its just not as black and white as you paint it, that’s all.

I heartily support this request - and realize how complex it is. I’d add search to the list of shortcomings of the weblog module for events. 

I have to say though that I’d hate to loose some of the features offered by the weblog module in a specific event calendar module - I find categories, custom fields, custom statuses and related entries all very useful for events.

You can tell it’s complex by how many lousy interfaces there are for web calendaring apps.  Dealing with time seems to add a significant level of complexity to everything.  The thing is that it would be incredibly useful not only for events but also for schedules.

Big up from me on this one too.

I posted a request for this on the job board and I disappointingly got 1 response that quickly fizzled away and nothing heard of again…

I agree, events calendars are a minefield but there are some gaping holes in basic functionality that should (in my opinion) be included in EE for this.

Like a “span_dates” parameter for instance.

I’d love to see this as well.

Leslie Camacho - 03 October 2007 01:22 PM

Designing a calendar that meets the needs of thousands of people is not easy, no matter what code libraries may exist. People complain about Google’s calendar solution, Basecamp’s etc… its one of those things that is impossible to get “just right” for everyone. I think you are waxing a bit nostalgic about pMachine Pro’s “event calendar” because it certainly wasn’t a “true event calendar”, at least by today’s standards.

I’m also not arguing the validity of the feature request, its just not as black and white as you paint it, that’s all.

I keep stumbling across this, and frankly it exasperates me.  The absence of a true, robust Events Calendar Module--as the original poster noted, without kludges and patches--is a real deficit to an otherwise great product.  The idea of getting it “just right” is of lesser importance to what hundreds of people would agree would be common features of a robust events calendar--1) the ability to handle recurring events, 2) to span multiple and non-consecutive dates, 3) to create relationships and reverse relationships to other entries and/or data sets, and 4) perhaps an option to employ some (auto-increment?) entry identifier other than {title} for events that are subtly different (and therefore unique) from one another… a monthly Book Club meeting, for example.

I think if the module just offered that, plus good integration with the rest of EE’s customizable features (unique field options, for example), it would satisfy 98% of the needs of 98% of those with uses for an events calendar.

I definitely would have used built-in functionality more than once so far if it were available, and would have saved myself a lot of time and effort.  I ended up using the Repeet plug-in the last time doing this, which, while great for a third-party add-on, took quite a bit of work tweaking to get working properly.

This is definitely something that I know a lot of my clients would have a use for.