Community Calendar Technical Details for Webmasters

Revised: April 02, 2002

Contents

• Overview
• Notes on Passing CGI Variables to a CGI Script
• CGI Scripts for Searching and Displaying the Calendar
• CGI Scripts for Public Submission/Modification of Calendar Events
• Help Files

Overview

The Community Calendar was designed so that administrators have control over what features are available to the public. The newest Community Calendar features include public submissions and modifications of events. Unlike events submitted and modified by Calendar administrators, publicly submitted and modified events require approval by a Calendar administrator.

Note: Visitors to your web site will not know about public submissions and modifications of Calendar events unless you create links to the CGI scripts that provide those features. If you do not want to provide these features to the public, don't create the links!

Notes on Passing CGI Variables to a CGI Script

The sections that follow detail how you can create links on your web site to perform various tasks with the Community Calendar. When you create the URLs for the links, you can construct them to pass variables to control how the Community Calendar behaves. The Community Calendar is a Perl-based CGI script, so remember the following when you attempt to pass CGI variables to the CGI script:

• CGI variable names are case sensitive. For example, the CGI variable name "Limit" is not the same as "limit".
• For text variables, all spaces must be specified as "%20", such as "?title=first%20meeting%20for%20newcomers"; special characters must be translated to their %nn value.
• Separate multiple variables by the "&" character.

CGI Scripts for Searching and Displaying the Calendar

The links below detail the scripts and variables available for searching and displaying the Calendar.

Note: In each of the URLs shown below, replace "your-website-domain" with the domain of your site.

Display Monthly View of the Calendar

http://your-website-domain/cgi/calendar/calendar-graphic.cgi

Search the Calendar, and then Display the Events Found

http://your-website-domain/cgi/calendar/search-process.cgi

To search for and display a specific set of calendar events, construct your URL with the following variables:

Limit	The maximum number of calendar events to display. The default number of events is 25.
NoSearchToC	By default, a table of contents is displayed for the list of displayed calendar events. Using the CGI variable NoSearchToC=1 (or setting it equal to anything but 0) removes the display of the table of contents.
title	Event title search string
category	Event category. This variable must be set equal to one of the following: all, other, arts, civic, education, entertainment, family, government, health, holiday, religious, social, or sport. These must be specified in all lower case.
sponsor	Event sponsor (host organization or club) search string
description	Event description search string
city	Event city location search string
dodate	dodate must equal 1 to search for a date range using the following variables: startsearchmonth (range 0-11) startsearchday (range 0-31) startsearchyear (range 1900-2030) endsearchmonth (range 0-11) endsearchday (range 0-31) endsearchyear (range 1900-2030) Note: To specify a date range, dodate must be equal to 1 and all other variables must be specified.

For example, The following URL searches for events sponsored by the "City Council" in the city "OurTown":

http://your-website-domain/cgi/calendar/search-process.cgi?sponsor=City%20Council&city=OurTown

Display the Calendar Search Page

http://your-website-domain/cgi/calendar/search-main.cgi

Optionally, you can preset CGI variables that are displayed as the default values on the search page. You may use all of the variables listed in the Search the Calendar, and then Display the Events Found section shown above.

CGI Scripts for Public Submission/Modification of Calendar Events

The links below detail the scripts and variables available for public submission and modification of Calendar events.

Note: In each of the URLs shown below, replace "your-website-domain" with the domain of your site.

Default Calendar Index Page

The default Calendar index page provides all of the links for using the Community Calendar. These include viewing the Calendar, searching the Calendar, public event submission/modification, and a link to the password protected Calendar Administrator page:

http://your-website-domain/cgi/calendar/

The default calendar index page, all of the public submission/modification pages, and the password protected Calendar Administrator pages use custom headers and footers. These pages insert a custom header and footer for your community around the HTML they generate. The files /custom/head.html and /custom/foot.html in your site are used unless you create custom header and footer files just for calendar in /custom/calendar/head.html and /custom/calendar/foot.html. For more information, please review Custom Headers and Footers.

Create and Submit a New Calendar Event

http://your-website-domain/cgi/calendar/calendar-anon-update-read.cgi?task=Create

Replace a Calendar Event

http://your-website-domain/cgi/calendar/calendar-anon-action.cgi?action=Replace

Create a New Calendar Event Using Information From an Existing Event

http://your-website-domain/cgi/calendar/calendar-anon-action.cgi?action=Clone

Modify a Calendar Event's Information for All Dates

http://your-website-domain/cgi/calendar/calendar-anon-action.cgi?action=Modify%20All%20

Modify a Calendar Event's Information for a Single Date

http://your-website-domain/cgi/calendar/calendar-anon-action.cgi?action=Modify%20Single%20Date

Remove a Calendar Event

http://your-website-domain/cgi/calendar/calendar-anon-action.cgi?action=Remove

Help Files

You may use the following links in your implementation to help your visitors understand how to use the Community Calendar.

Viewing the Calendar

http://kinetic.more.net/web/mnetapps/calendar/user.shtml

Custom Search

http://kinetic.more.net/web/mnetapps/calendar/user.shtml#search

Note: Due to the greater complexity of public submission and modification of events, those tasks already contain links to the help files. If you provide links to those tasks, your users will automatically have access to the appropriate help files.