+lupa+
2006-06-11 04:06:22 UTC
Hi Mark,
All you ask is possible, and several parts easier than you might be
envisioning them so far, but other requirements stretch the CalendarX
capabilities in its current implementation. I've thought of implementing
some of these for our local soccer leagues, but never actually gone through
with them (with funding and the direction and specs that come with it, I
would consider such extensions).
I'll try to address them quickly, so you can get a start... I'm leaving
town (and my net connection) for most of this week (Mon-Fri), so other
questions can be addressed to the listserv
(calendarx-***@lists.sourceforge.net), which is getting this email as a cc.
I'll start with my overall comments, then perhaps add some more inline
below. Much of these comments are on-the-spot, and I may change my mind by
the time I get through.
1. It's a monster! But seeing what your current calendar looks like, I
think you can make some very substantial improvements easily, and without
doing nearly as much work as you outlined. By the way, the filtering on
your current calendar isn't working for me, at least not consistently.
2. (from your Q1) You will NOT have to create more than one game entry per
game to have it show on separate calendars. Absolutely not. More in my #3
and beyond.
3. Key will be creation of a custom "Game" archetype product that differs
somewhat from the normal "Event". Specifically, this will allow you some
freedom to customize CalendarX so that you only need to use a few calendars
(not 88 or more). Also, it will allow you to use the Game object for a
variety of purposes beyond scheduling (like, it could even hold scores,
stats, etc, if you wish, or just link to such a page in its view). Not
necessary, of course. I think this could simply be a slightly modified
(repurposed) stock "Event" content type.
4. Overall, I think avoiding creation of too many subcalendars will help
you a lot. Certainly there should be little or no need to create a
subcalendar for each team (although possibly for each division). By
thoughtful creation of your Game event object, you can make do with very
few actual calendars/subcalendars. Perhaps an easier way to look at it is
just a few separate calendars (no subcalendars), and I'll only consider
your Arcadia LL events, not all the other stuff (which you don't mention in
your email). Here are three examples (5 and 6 and 7)...
5. Very Simple Model: One calendar only, for Little League Divisions.
DivisionCal: One calendar that shows all games (by default) but the
filtering lets you isolate one or more of the 14 divisions to show only the
games scheduled for those divisions.
6. Full Games Model: One calendar with subcalendars... one subcalendar for
each Division.
DivisionCal: One calendar that shows all games (by default) but has
subcalendars, one for each Division (14). Within each division subcalendar
you can filter to show one or more of the teams' calendars. This has the
benefit of giving you individual "team" calendars with no special
programming customization needed.
NOTE: Without customizing the code inside CalendarX, for both of these
approaches to work properly, some care and attention has to be paid to the
Subjects used in these Game events. I think in order to work correctly,
there would have to be a separate Subject for each Team name... something
that reasonably represents the Division and Team in the Subject chosen...
perhaps something like:
BBMinors South Bend Blue Sox
BBMajors South Bend Blue Sox
etc.
Then judicious use of the listOfSubjects and listOfSubjectTitles properties
can get these listed appropriately.
7. Other calendars.
For creating calendars of the Practices, Meetings, etc., each should have
its own appropriate Event type (comparable to the custom Game type), so
that they are easily separated for their own calendar. That (I think)
would be the easiest way to do this.
8. Other miscellaneous ideas, topics. One limitation of CalendarX for
this setup is that I can't easily see how to create a "Field" calendar
without customizing code within CalendarX, or alternatively (bad
alternative) creating two separate Game content types for each actual Game
(or Practice, or whatever). On the plus side, it probably would not be
that hard to customize CalendarX for this purpose, and creating a custom
Archetype Game event type that includes a "Field #" attribute is
practically trivial. Ideally, there would be separate attributes for Sport
(baseball vs softball) and Division and Team Name as well, and a customized
CalendarX could understand them and do something with them. That's not so
outrageous, really, but it is definitely not out-of-the-box functionality.
However, such a custimized Game event type would also make it quite
possible to add a new Game by specifying those attributes (Division, Team,
Field) and the "Subject" attribute could be calculated from these, instead
of having to select it manually or create it programmatically.
9. I'm no expert on this, but lots of people have scripts for creating new
events (or other Plone content items) from CSV and XML files. There are
howtos or tutorials for this on Plone.org. In short, anything that can be
done through the web interface for Plone can also be scripted, and anyone
(such as yourself) who can create bash scripts for sql inserts should be
able to figure it out... same concept, different syntax.
Of course, with 1000+ players in your league, perhaps a few dollars fees
per player could go toward development of a robust Plone+CalendarX based
league scheduling solution that could be offered as an open source solution
for everyone.
That was too much information at once probably. Not a trivial
problem! Good luck. Play ball!
+lupa+
All you ask is possible, and several parts easier than you might be
envisioning them so far, but other requirements stretch the CalendarX
capabilities in its current implementation. I've thought of implementing
some of these for our local soccer leagues, but never actually gone through
with them (with funding and the direction and specs that come with it, I
would consider such extensions).
I'll try to address them quickly, so you can get a start... I'm leaving
town (and my net connection) for most of this week (Mon-Fri), so other
questions can be addressed to the listserv
(calendarx-***@lists.sourceforge.net), which is getting this email as a cc.
I'll start with my overall comments, then perhaps add some more inline
below. Much of these comments are on-the-spot, and I may change my mind by
the time I get through.
1. It's a monster! But seeing what your current calendar looks like, I
think you can make some very substantial improvements easily, and without
doing nearly as much work as you outlined. By the way, the filtering on
your current calendar isn't working for me, at least not consistently.
2. (from your Q1) You will NOT have to create more than one game entry per
game to have it show on separate calendars. Absolutely not. More in my #3
and beyond.
3. Key will be creation of a custom "Game" archetype product that differs
somewhat from the normal "Event". Specifically, this will allow you some
freedom to customize CalendarX so that you only need to use a few calendars
(not 88 or more). Also, it will allow you to use the Game object for a
variety of purposes beyond scheduling (like, it could even hold scores,
stats, etc, if you wish, or just link to such a page in its view). Not
necessary, of course. I think this could simply be a slightly modified
(repurposed) stock "Event" content type.
4. Overall, I think avoiding creation of too many subcalendars will help
you a lot. Certainly there should be little or no need to create a
subcalendar for each team (although possibly for each division). By
thoughtful creation of your Game event object, you can make do with very
few actual calendars/subcalendars. Perhaps an easier way to look at it is
just a few separate calendars (no subcalendars), and I'll only consider
your Arcadia LL events, not all the other stuff (which you don't mention in
your email). Here are three examples (5 and 6 and 7)...
5. Very Simple Model: One calendar only, for Little League Divisions.
DivisionCal: One calendar that shows all games (by default) but the
filtering lets you isolate one or more of the 14 divisions to show only the
games scheduled for those divisions.
6. Full Games Model: One calendar with subcalendars... one subcalendar for
each Division.
DivisionCal: One calendar that shows all games (by default) but has
subcalendars, one for each Division (14). Within each division subcalendar
you can filter to show one or more of the teams' calendars. This has the
benefit of giving you individual "team" calendars with no special
programming customization needed.
NOTE: Without customizing the code inside CalendarX, for both of these
approaches to work properly, some care and attention has to be paid to the
Subjects used in these Game events. I think in order to work correctly,
there would have to be a separate Subject for each Team name... something
that reasonably represents the Division and Team in the Subject chosen...
perhaps something like:
BBMinors South Bend Blue Sox
BBMajors South Bend Blue Sox
etc.
Then judicious use of the listOfSubjects and listOfSubjectTitles properties
can get these listed appropriately.
7. Other calendars.
For creating calendars of the Practices, Meetings, etc., each should have
its own appropriate Event type (comparable to the custom Game type), so
that they are easily separated for their own calendar. That (I think)
would be the easiest way to do this.
8. Other miscellaneous ideas, topics. One limitation of CalendarX for
this setup is that I can't easily see how to create a "Field" calendar
without customizing code within CalendarX, or alternatively (bad
alternative) creating two separate Game content types for each actual Game
(or Practice, or whatever). On the plus side, it probably would not be
that hard to customize CalendarX for this purpose, and creating a custom
Archetype Game event type that includes a "Field #" attribute is
practically trivial. Ideally, there would be separate attributes for Sport
(baseball vs softball) and Division and Team Name as well, and a customized
CalendarX could understand them and do something with them. That's not so
outrageous, really, but it is definitely not out-of-the-box functionality.
However, such a custimized Game event type would also make it quite
possible to add a new Game by specifying those attributes (Division, Team,
Field) and the "Subject" attribute could be calculated from these, instead
of having to select it manually or create it programmatically.
9. I'm no expert on this, but lots of people have scripts for creating new
events (or other Plone content items) from CSV and XML files. There are
howtos or tutorials for this on Plone.org. In short, anything that can be
done through the web interface for Plone can also be scripted, and anyone
(such as yourself) who can create bash scripts for sql inserts should be
able to figure it out... same concept, different syntax.
Of course, with 1000+ players in your league, perhaps a few dollars fees
per player could go toward development of a robust Plone+CalendarX based
league scheduling solution that could be offered as an open source solution
for everyone.
That was too much information at once probably. Not a trivial
problem! Good luck. Play ball!
+lupa+
Lupa
I was very pleased to find CalendarX as I am moving a jsp/servlet/mysql web
site to plone and I need a somewhat complex calendar application. I believe
CalendarX will work if I create enough subcalendars. I thought I would get
your thoughts on it to see if what I want to do is possible without extensive
modifications.
My calendar is used to present the schedules for out Little League baseball
and softball teams as well as other league events. We have a total of 88
teams (59 baseball and 29 softball) spread across 14 divisions (9 baseball
and 5 softball) and 11 fields. Each team has somewhere between 14-20 games in
a season (a total of about 800 games in a season and another 1,200 or so
events - practices, board meetings, clinics, etc.).
Based on my reading of your Calendar Resource project, I think this is what I
need to do.
1. Create 88 subcalendars and 1 main calendar. each team will have a
subcalendar. However, if this is true, then I am actually duplicating a lot
of data - two entries for each game. Is this true, or is there a way to have
one game entry in the database, i.e.Springfield Sallies vs. Kenosha Comets,
and then have that entry appear on both the Springfield Sallies and Kenosha
Comets calendars?
2. Is it possible to have drop down lists for the selection process
instead of
check boxes? The reason being that our team names are long (South Bend Blue
Sox) and the team names are not unique. By that I mean we have a South Bend
Blue Sox team in each of the 5 softball divisions (T-ball, Farm, Minors,
Majors, Juniors). So I am struggling a little bit with the way to identify
the teams and divisions
3. How can I get the data into the calendars without typing in each game from
the web? We use a Windows application to schedule all the games and fields
and then export it as a csv file that I filter with a simple bash script
which converts it to sql statements. I then use those sql statements to load
the games into a mysql database for the jsp/servlet/mysql application.
If this is all too confusing, our current calendar is at
www.ArcadiaLittleLeague.com/calendar.html. Since the season is almost over,
click on the month of May or April and then play around with the filtering to
see how the events are handled. You can remove a filter by just clicking on
the name of the filter. It is not that elegant, but it works.
Thanks for any insights you might be able to share!
--
Mark Phillips
VP Softball
Webmaster
Arcadia Little League
www.ArcadiaLittleLeague.org
602 524-0376
I was very pleased to find CalendarX as I am moving a jsp/servlet/mysql web
site to plone and I need a somewhat complex calendar application. I believe
CalendarX will work if I create enough subcalendars. I thought I would get
your thoughts on it to see if what I want to do is possible without extensive
modifications.
My calendar is used to present the schedules for out Little League baseball
and softball teams as well as other league events. We have a total of 88
teams (59 baseball and 29 softball) spread across 14 divisions (9 baseball
and 5 softball) and 11 fields. Each team has somewhere between 14-20 games in
a season (a total of about 800 games in a season and another 1,200 or so
events - practices, board meetings, clinics, etc.).
Based on my reading of your Calendar Resource project, I think this is what I
need to do.
1. Create 88 subcalendars and 1 main calendar. each team will have a
subcalendar. However, if this is true, then I am actually duplicating a lot
of data - two entries for each game. Is this true, or is there a way to have
one game entry in the database, i.e.Springfield Sallies vs. Kenosha Comets,
and then have that entry appear on both the Springfield Sallies and Kenosha
Comets calendars?
2. Is it possible to have drop down lists for the selection process
instead of
check boxes? The reason being that our team names are long (South Bend Blue
Sox) and the team names are not unique. By that I mean we have a South Bend
Blue Sox team in each of the 5 softball divisions (T-ball, Farm, Minors,
Majors, Juniors). So I am struggling a little bit with the way to identify
the teams and divisions
3. How can I get the data into the calendars without typing in each game from
the web? We use a Windows application to schedule all the games and fields
and then export it as a csv file that I filter with a simple bash script
which converts it to sql statements. I then use those sql statements to load
the games into a mysql database for the jsp/servlet/mysql application.
If this is all too confusing, our current calendar is at
www.ArcadiaLittleLeague.com/calendar.html. Since the season is almost over,
click on the month of May or April and then play around with the filtering to
see how the events are handled. You can remove a filter by just clicking on
the name of the filter. It is not that elegant, but it works.
Thanks for any insights you might be able to share!
--
Mark Phillips
VP Softball
Webmaster
Arcadia Little League
www.ArcadiaLittleLeague.org
602 524-0376