Google Calendar Events, 0.7.1

This is just a bug fix release, nothing particularly exciting, I’m afraid. Here’s a quick overview of the changes:

Weird AJAX Bug

An odd bug was causing AJAX enabled calendar grids to disappear, or just get stuck loading, when navigating between months. It took me quite a while to replicate it, which was very frustrating, as several people had reported the same issue but I had no idea what was going on!

Anyway, I finally tracked down the problem. It was due to me being an idiot and not really understanding how preg_replace_callback works.

Stupid Timezones

Timezones are confusing. If I ever make another plugin, please remind me to make sure it has nothing to do with dates and times.

Hopefully, this release should fix an issue causing all-day events to continue to be displayed even after they have ended.

Tooltip Date Title Bug

In some cases, the title settings for AJAX grids were being ignored during AJAX requests. This release should fix that too. Many thanks to S. Wyatt Young for bringing my attention to this problem.

Output Sanitisation

Output sanitisation was a bit lacking in some places, but should be much improved now.

Caching Empty Feeds

Previously, the plugin did not cache feeds that returned no events. This meant that if you were displaying a list or grid of events from several feeds, one or more of which were empty, HTTP requests would be made for the empty feeds on every page load, which is slow.

Many thanks to everyone who reported the above issues, and helped with testing the fixes. It is very much appreciated!

As always, bug reports, feature requests and any other feedback can be left in the comments on the plugin homepage, or on this post.

48 Responses

  1. Great plugin, but one question. Is it possible to link an event title to an external url (ie not the Google Calendar page)? This is the one field that Apple iCal has and is missing from Google.

    I don’t want the url to be displayed, as would be the case via description, just the ability to link.

    Thanks
    Julian

    Reply

    1. Hi Julian,

      if you use the HTML (or Markdown) decoding facility in the Event Display Builder, you could use the following:

      [event-title html="true"]

      Assuming the title fields for your events contain something like this:

      <a href="http://your-url">Event Title</a>

      Obviously, it depends on how you utilise your Google Calendar as to whether entering HTML (or Markdown) into fields is suitable or not, but this is currently the only way to accomplish your request.

      Ross.

      Reply

  3. The plugin installs perfectly with no errors, however, there is nothing in the Settings menu to configure the plug in. I activated it, which it says it’s activated properly, but still nothing.

    I even logged out/logged in, uninstalled/reinstalled…and still nothing. Very strange.

    Reply

    1. Hi Brad,

      This is likely to be because your server is running PHP 4. The plugin requires PHP 5.2 or above, as does WordPress itself as of version 3.2. If you get in touch with your web host, they should update your server to PHP 5.

      Ross.

      Reply

  4. I’ve looked around for this but can’t find it. I’m so sorry if I missed it. Is it possible to actually put a couple of words on the grid layout? I have a client who doesn’t just want to rely on them to hover over the days. For example, if on one day they have a festival, a tour and a museum opening to have words show the grid and then when they hover over they see more?

    I love this plugin so far. Great documentation also. Good job!

    Reply

    1. Hi Sandy,

      Unfortunately, no, this isn’t possible yet. Lots of people have requested this functionality though, so it’s very high up on my to-do list! When I get some time, I’ll see what I can come up with.

      Many thanks for your feedback.

      Ross.

      Reply

  5. Hi Ross,

    Great plugin, thank you.

    A question: There is a Javascript Prototype conflict (i guess) with jQuery, causing “Uncaught TypeError: Object # has no method ‘qtip’” message.
    Is there any solution to fix this bug? Event’s info aren’t displayed in browser.

    George.

    Reply

    1. Hi Katsampu,

      This isn’t a bug. In your case it appears to be caused by your theme (or perhaps a plugin) loading an extra version of jQuery.

      It looks like you’ve already enabled the “Add JavaScript to footer” option, which should work around the problem. However, your calendar is currently empty, so there are no events to display on hover. Perhaps you may need to adjust the “Retrieve events from”, “Retrieve events until” and “Maximum number of events to retrieve” options so that events for the current month are retrieved.

      Let me know if you’re still having issues.

      Ross.

      Reply

  6. I love most of what I’ve found in this plugin. I may have over looked it, but is there a way to output the calendar as an event list?

    Thanks!
    Cory

    Reply

  8. Awesome Plugin – we are incorporating into our Photography Club website redesign. I am having one issue and if there is a setting I have not configured correctly I apologize for not catching it – We are listing 3 upcoming events on the the sidebar in our WordPress site and everything is displaying correctly, however, when you click on “more info” the event time comes up as GMT? Hopefully it is not because I have missed a configuration – been looking at it for the last few hours! Thanks for any help.

    Reply

    1. Hi Mary,

      Unfortunately, this is bug. However, it only affects the Simple Display Options. If you use the Event Display Builder option instead (from the “Select display customization method” drop-down in the feed settings), it should work ok.

      To replicate your existing output, you would use the following in the EDB field:

      <p class="gce-list-event">[event-title]</p>
<p class="gce-list-start"><span>Starts:</span> [start-time]</p>
<p class="gce-list-loc"><span>Location:</span> [location]</p>
<p class="gce-list-link">[link]</p>

      Ross.

      Reply

  9. Question: Is it possible to style the teeny-tiny little icons which provide next/previous month navigation. I have tried changing some of the styling – got the title to display larger but can’t seem to get .gce-next and .gce-prev to get out of their teeny style groove. I am guessing that they are inheriting a size from somewhere, but I can’t put my finger on it. On my screen they are displaying at probably 5 or 6 px (.25 em??) while the rest of the screen displays at more normal 11-12px/1 em.

    Here is a link to where I am using it:
    http://quincypublicschools.com/calendar/

    Any thoughts? Would prefer using em as have set up the blog text to be resized on demand for ADA compliance.

    GREAT plugin by the way.

    Reply

    1. Hi Patricia,

      Yes. The navigation links have CSS classes of gce-prev and gce-next, so something like this would do the trick:

      .gce-prev,
.gce-next{
    font-size:2.2em;
}

      Or, you could style the entire “top bar” (navigation links, month / year, loading text) all in one go with this:

      .gce-caption{
    font-size:2.2em;
    line-height:1.5em;
}

      This would also prevent the slight upward shift of the calendar on your site when navigating between months.

      Ross.

      Reply

  12. This is a brilliant plug-in; thanks for creating it! One really minor question: is it possible to have multi-day events only display once in a list view (I have that set up), but display on each day they take place in the grid view (i.e. so that the date does not appear in grey, though there’s technically something happening)?

    Reply

    1. Hi Andrew,

      To do this, you’ll need to create another feed in the plugin, using the same feed URL. You can set the new feed to expand multi-day events, and use it for the grid display, while still using the original feed for the list.

      Ross.

      Reply

  13. Maybe I am just not looking hard enough but on the main calender (not the widget) I can not find the previous or next month buttons at all. I have dissected it with firebug also and can’t locate them at all. What am I doing wrong??

    Reply

        1. Stan,

          The previous / next month arrows will only appear if the plugin has retrieved events in past / future months. You may need to adjust the “Retrieve events from / until” and “Maximum number of events to retrieve” options.

          Also, if you have only recently added events in future / past months, you might need to clear the feed cache by clicking the “Refresh” link for the feed in the main plugin settings.

          Ross.

          Reply

    1. Hi Jeff,

      This is a different issue. It is occurring on your site because the AJAX request is being sent from http://www.academyofdanse.com, but is being sent to http://02f394b.netsolhost.com. This is determined to be “cross-site scripting”, which is blocked by browsers for security reasons.

      What do you have the “WordPress address (URL)” and “Site address (URL)” options (Settings > General) set to? You may need to adjust these so that they both use the appropriate URL (I guess http://www.academyofdanse.com is the one you want).

      Let me know if you’re still having problems.

      Ross.

      Reply

  15. Hey Ross, incredible plugin!

    I’m having some trouble with doing custom CSS for page lists and widgets. I see everyone else is able to set list-style-type to none, but I seem to be unable to do that. Any suggestions?

    Leo

    Reply

    1. Hi Leo,

      You theme’s CSS is probably overriding something somewhere. Could you post a link to your site, so I can take a closer look?

      Ross.

      Reply

  16. Thanks for a great and efficient plugin. Did exactly what we wanted. I’ve done a few creative things with the display (via CSS) to add popup descriptions with a hover on the widget list and so on. You can see it here: http://www.syccolumbus.org/

    I think I could have done these styles a bit more efficiently than I did… but I was under a deadline and it worked great. Very glad for the class tags you’ve included!

    Reply

    1. Brian,

      That look awesome! Great job. It’s cool to see people customising the plugin in imaginative ways.

      Many thanks for your feedback,
      Ross.

      Reply

  17. Do you need to have a wordpress site? This is just what I am looking for to add to my school web site that I am helping with, but it’s just a regular web site.

    Reply

  18. Really like the many options in the plugin.
    Is it possible (in the css) to set different colours for events from different calendars in the agenda list?

    Reply

    1. Hi RuthEd,

      Yes. The plugin automatically applies feed specific classes to each event in the list. So, something like this should do the trick:

      .gce-list .gce-feed-1{
    background:#f00;
}

.gce-list .gce-feed-2{
    background:#0f0;
}

      That would make events from feed 1 red, and events from feed 2 green.

      Let me know if you have any further questions.

      Ross.

      Reply

      1. Thanks for your reply. I’ve got the calendar styled how I want it now as a widget and on a page.

        How easy is it to have an ajax list that starts with x events, then goes forward x events when clicking an arrow (ie similar to the ajax grid, but in a list)?

        Reply

        1. Hi RuthEd,

          An Ajax list isn’t possible with the plugin currently, I’m afraid. I’ll add it to my list as something to look into for a future release though.

          Ross.

          Reply

  19. hello,

    Thanks for this great plugin, he work fine.

    But i have a little problem, can you help me ?

    I want see in list only the present day event, but i dont no how to make this.

    Reply

    1. Hi Daorven,

      To show only events from “today”, you would use the following settings:

      Retrieve events from: 00:00 today
      Retrieve events until: 00:00 today (with an offset of 86400)

      There are 86400 seconds in a day, so the above gives a 24 hour range.

      Ross.

      Reply

  20. I love your plugin! And it’s been ticking away nicely until today.

    All of a sudden, the plugin cannot read my Google Apps calendar. It gives the following message when I’m logged in:
    Access to this feed was denied (403). Please ensure you have public sharing enabled for your calendar.

    Now, I KNOW that the calendar is public – and this has been working already. I haven’t changed anything, yet the WordPress site (http://ambassadorstoastmasters.co.uk) cannot access the calendar.

    But here’s the kicker, when I access the page through a browser or even just use WGET, I can get the data no problem.

    The calendar is at http://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/johnreid.it_jarm7jlcia7e3kmbdi9evo1238%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic

    Any thoughts would be massively appreciated.

    Reply

    1. Hi John,

      Quite a few people have reported the same thing in the last couple of days. It seems Google has changed something in Apps calendar. Could you double check the sharing settings for your feed / account again, to make sure everything is as it should be.

      If you look through the XML returned from your feed URL in a browser / in wget, you’ll notice it only contains the free / busy information and not any event details. This suggests that “Share only my free / busy information…” options is enabled somewhere.

      Ross.

      Reply

  22. When using the plugin, we discovered a bug that was hard to pinpoint, but I think we figured it out. Not sure why it was doing it, but it basically does this. First, if you are using the plugin, and also logged into your google account, there is no issue at all. If you log out of your google account, and access our goggle calendar that is a feed on a website, and go to the ‘More details…’ it gives a time of 5 hours later than what we see on the calendar. After playing around with every setting under the sun to do with time zones, I figured out what was causing it. In the plugin, under the feed, if you edit the feed, and change the ‘Display Options’ to the ‘Simple Display Options’, and go back and look at the event, the time is 5 hours off (I am in EST). If you ONLY look at the event on the feed location and are showing the start/end times, it is correct on that feed part, but if you click on ‘More details…’ it is that view that gives the time 5 hours later than it should be. And you DO NOT see this behavior if you are logged into your google account, everything is fine. Just wanted to pass that on in case anyone else was having a similar problem… tricky one to figure out.

    Reply

    1. Hi Kimberly,

      Yes, this definitely is a bug, unfortunately. It’s already fixed in the development version of the plugin.

      As you’ve correctly noted, it only affect the simple display options, so using the event display builder instead is a workaround for this for the time being (not to mention, a lot more flexible than the simple display options!).

      Thanks!

      Ross.

      Reply

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