A5 Interacting with Google calander

[Chris.Tanti]

Hi,

Has anybody had any experience of using Google/apps, specifically the google calender part?

I have a job management app written in A5 and I would like to have a button that allows the data to be published to a google calendar (under our google/apps setup)

I have the url text to do this, here is an example.

"http://www.google.com/calendar/a/yourdomain.com/event?action=TEMPLATE&text=Test%20from%20QnJ&dates=20070101T090000Z/20070101T100000Z&details=This%20is%20a%20test%20push%20to%20the%20cal&location=R%26M&trp=false&sprop=www.yourdomain.com&sprop=name:Your%20Org%20Name%20Ltd\""

Its not the smoothest process, the button fires up a browser pointing to a generated url (actually generating the url is the the plan, not implemented yet), the user logs in (logins automatic if he's done so already), and they are presented with a confirmation screen. What I can't find is a way to drop the event into a particular calander, for example I have set up a shared calender for Research Jobs and one for Other Job Types. At the moment, its purely under the users main cal. I suppose I could create a user for the Research Job Types and Other Job Types, but then the logon procedure would become messy (users having to use different logons depending on the type of job they want to create an event for). Unless there is a way to automatically pass the logon variables in the url?

Also, have created an xdialog box that pops the calander up quite well, but would prefer for the browser to be directly embedded in a standard form, is that possible? We are also getting an error when opening the form through xdialogue, the error appears outside A5 as well, but if you open the link in IE6, it appears as an error in the status line as apposed to a pop up that stopes the site being rendered unless you give a confirmation to continue. Is it possible to get it to render in Firefox from xdialogue as the error doesnt appear in this browser, or is there a way in xdialogue for it to ignore the error?

[Chris.Tanti]

Re: A5 Interacting with Google calander

Got this to now work, I can post to a specific shared Calendar by using the src= line taken from the calendar example (for including an inline cal on your website). I am not using the xdialogue method of opening the url, just the standard open url method, which is fine for our purposes.

[Dan Blank]

Re: A5 Interacting with Google calander

Hi Chris,

I think you have an article for the next newsletter!

[Lance Gurd]

Re: A5 Interacting with Google calander

Yes Chris,

I agree with Dan, sounds interesting

[Chris.Tanti]

Re: A5 Interacting with Google calander

Well, Not sure if Im up to that, and to be honest its not that well developed as yet (probably not worth an article as such), sorry! I will post an example, it should be possible to render the url on the fly by taking fields from your database, but remember you have to give a valid url for the free text (no spaces etc, use %20 etc)

This example is for a standard calendar, not the hosted version, and doesnt specify a specific Cal

http://www.google.com/calendar/event?action=TEMPLATE&text=[COLOR="red"]This_Is_The_Description_Line[/COLOR]&dates=20061216T140000Z/20061216T150000Z&details=This_Is_The_Detail_Line&location=[COLOR="Red"]This_Is_The_Location_Of_Event[/COLOR]&trp=false&sprop=[COLOR="red"]WebsiteAddress[/COLOR]&sprop=name:[COLOR="red"]WebsiteName[/COLOR]

Here is the hosted version, you can get the "src" and "pvttk" values in the calendar managent section (it will autogenerate an example for you to paste), these allow you to post directly to a specific shared cal in your hosted domain (so for example we could have a Research specific Cal, and then one for Print Specific)

http://www.google.com/calendar/a/yourdomain.com/event?action=TEMPLATE&src=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx%40group.calendar.google.com&pvttk=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&text=[COLOR="red"]This_Is_The_Description_Line[/COLOR]&dates=20061215T090000Z/20061215T100000Z&details=This_Is_The_Detail_Line&location=This_Is_The_Location_Of_Event&trp=false&sprop=www.yourdomain.com&sprop=name:company_name

We originaly just wanted to investigate shared Calendars, without the expense of having to licence and maintain an MS Exchange Server.
Then we thought it could be intersting if we could post job schedules etc on the sit as well. I know there is a google API that undoubtedly would allow you to do it in a much smoother more profesional way, but this quick and dirty method will do for the time being.

If any one is interested check out www.google.com/apps

Its far from perfect, it doesnt synch with outlook/PDA's (well not withought some additional utilities), isnt terribly smooth, but I imagine this will develop over time.

I would be interested to know if its possible to bring data from the xml Calendar feed back into A5 (theres a potential for dates to be changed, on one or other systems, which could get messy)

I know this could probably be done with A5 web app server, but Its a robust system (we don't have to manage the web server!) and as far as I am aware, it would be quite tricky getting the same functionality in A5.

[Lenny Forziati]

Re: A5 Interacting with Google calander

I will post an example, it should be possible to render the url on the fly by taking fields from your database, but remember you have to give a valid url for the free text (no spaces etc, use %20 etc)

Xbasic provides urlencode() for just this purpose.

[Chris.Tanti]

Re: A5 Interacting with Google calander

Thanks Lenny, much easier than the strtran method I was thinking Of.

Wouldnt it be great if A5 had a built in Script to do this more cleanly... I suppose its out of the question for v8!?

Heres a snippet of Java from the API documentation
http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/calendar.html

Do any of you think that the equiv could be recreated in xbasic?
The existing method is OK, but could benefit from being a bit more transparent (ie. not having to be triggered by going to a website and then confirming the creation)

URL postUrl =
  new URL("http://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/default/private/full");
EventEntry myEntry = new EventEntry();

myEntry.setTitle(new PlainTextConstruct("Tennis with Beth"));
myEntry.setContent(new PlainTextConstruct("Meet for a quick lesson."));

Person author = new Person("Jo March", null, "[email protected]");
myEntry.getAuthors().add(author);

DateTime startTime = DateTime.parseDateTime("2006-04-17T15:00:00-08:00");
DateTime endTime = DateTime.parseDateTime("2006-04-17T17:00:00-08:00");
When eventTimes = new When();
eventTimes.setStartTime(startTime);
eventTimes.setEndTime(endTime);
myEntry.addTime(eventTimes);

CalendarService myService =
  new CalendarService("exampleCo-exampleApp-1");
myService.setUserCredentials("[email protected]", "mypassword");

// Send the request and receive the response:
EventEntry insertedEntry = myService.insert(postUrl, myEntry);

[Steve Wood]

Re: A5 Interacting with Google calander

Chris - did you ever get anywhere with this? I have a client that wants to integrate Outlook - Alpha - Google Calendar. I think I could rewrite the API below (as an HTTP_POST), but want to know if you did anything, or you want to work with me on something like this.

[Scholin]

Re: A5 Interacting with Google calander

Steve or Chris - have you or anyone else done anything further with this? I wonder if Ajax calls would make this easier now?

A web calendar or scheduler sure would be a GREAT utility. I am desperately looking for something like this. Any thoughts?

[Steve Wood]

Re: A5 Interacting with Google calander

See this post for the class on Ajax. The trainer has build a very nice calendar using Ajax and I am sure will include it in his training material.

http://msgboard.alphasoftware.com/al...ad.php?t=74136

[Scholin]

Re: A5 Interacting with Google calander

I signed up the first day and looking forward to taking it.

I know that you and I as well as others have discussed such a calendar utility - I hope he does have an Ajax calender/scheduler utility; this is something that many of us can benefit from as there are many applications for such a utility.

Thanks Steve!