Best way to implement a Calendar interface using Google Cal feeds for events?

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Best way to implement a Calendar interface using Google Cal feeds for events?

I'm building a site for my school as a pet project, which would include accounts for all students. I want to display a calendar for each student that should have the following features:

It should be able to import events from multiple Google Calendar feeds. Compatibility with either the XML, ICAL or HTML feed will do.
It should be able to give different colors to different events based on the feeds which they originated from.
It would be nice if the calendar could also give different colors based on certains tags in the event titles, like all events starting with "Test: " will be red, and all events starting with "Deadline: " can be blue.
The interface should be nice, but simple. It should be easy to implement, and no dependency on Javascript would be good. Preferably, it will work simply on PHP.
It must provide 3 views of the calendar: Month, Week & Agenda

Features I don't require are:

Write ability (the calendars can/should be read-only)
Multiple-day events or recurring events
Links or html content inside events

What would be the simplest pre-made solution to implementing this? Currently, I am trying out various solutions like FullCalendar, and the various solutions listed at the Plans Website. However, none of them are perfect, because either they are not supported any more, or require javascript, or don't have all the features I need. I'm also gonna check out the GWT-cal plugin, and the Zend Calendar GData framework, but any feedback on your experiences with any of these would be good.

Can someone suggest the easiest way of getting this working?

you should check out gwt-cal. versin 0.8.x only provides day/week view but the 0.9.0 branch implements an Agenda view with a Month view in progress.

2009-10-01 03:46:12

Ya I checked that out too, but from what I understood, that would require me to use GWT for the rest of the site too, or atleast the rest of the page. I cannot rely on the school providing me with a Java server.

2009-10-01 13:48:27

GWT does not require a Java server. Gwt compiles java code to javascript and can therefore be run from any standard web server, or even an html file sitting on your desktop. GWT is client side only unless you use the gwt rpc methods to communicate with your server.Instead of GWT's RPC you would use json (served up by your php application) to make the calendar interactive.I'm not pushing gwt ... but just wanted to clear up any misconceptionYou can also check out google web elements, which lets you host a google calendar widget on your page: http://www.google.com/webelements/

2009-10-03 02:00:52

Yes, from what I understood, some front-end parts of GWT are converted into Javascript, while the rest is left as a Java server backend. I'm not quite sure, I'll dive into the GWT documentation again. But I really disliked the way Google has documented it, its really cumbersome to get started with.And yes, I checked out the widget, and am currently using something similar. Check out my comment on the next answer and my other question for details: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1504398/is-there-anything-wrong-with-the-way-im-implementing-a-calendar-on-my-site

2009-10-03 15:55:16

First of all, GWT-cal is not PHP, it is Java. Secondly, why do you not want to work with JavaScript? Finally, if you are importing it all from Google Calendar, why not use Google Calendar as it has almost all you are requesting and can handle all of the user accounts and such?

The way I understand the project is you are attempting to either make one page that displays many different calendars from all the students or have each student sign in and view their calendar. Is that correct?

Daniel 2009-10-01 13:51:57

Yes, in an ideal world, our school would just shift over to Google Apps, instead of using ancient retarded software like Lotus, but then, I guess they don't wanna waste their institutional license of Lotus, and after all, how can free software be better than paid stuff?Teachers wouldn't be limited to school domain mail ids which are only accessible in school, we wouldn't have to convert each word document to the older format before emailing it to them because Docs can handle .docx files, and we wouldn't haphazardly get our monthly schedules in the form of tables in Word documents.

2009-10-03 16:00:11

Have you gotten any further on a solution? I know what I would do is attempt to understand the ical format and just created a database with students, days and items. The ical format is processed and put into the database. Upon request, the calendar is rendered as a table with certain html classes depending on regex for the name and students. That functionality would be hard to find in a calendar builder.

Daniel 2009-10-07 14:13:16

+1 A:

Ok the word limit on comments is ridiculously low and irritating, so after having posted two comments and still having more to say, I decided to just post an answer. Sorry...

Yes, GCal is perfect, but I can't trust the technologically challenged students of my school to manually subscribe to ical feeds. So i wanna provide a site where people can select from a list of courses, and automatically get a customized event feed.

Right now, I have a rough implementation going by making a common Google Account that has separate calendars for each course. Then with some url trickery, I embed a custom iframe that gives a special read-only version of the calendar with only the calendars applicable to that specific user. This will probably raise problems when I want email notifications of events and stuff, and might force me to go into the Google Calendar API in detail. :(

Can you check out my other question at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1504398/is-there-anything-wrong-with-the-way-im-implementing-a-calendar-on-my-site and give some feedback?

2009-10-03 16:20:17

I would build (or find) an app that mixes the selected iCal feeds together to create a new feed, so that it can be subscribed to in GCal/iCal/Outloook/30boxes/...

If you still want a display you might try WebCalendar.

IIRC there are also some Drupal modules for this kind of thing.

singpolyma 2009-10-22 14:41:10

Yes that's pretty much what I'm doing with an embedded Google calendar now, but now I've got to work out a reminder system, that will send out reminders to only the relevant people for specific calendars.

2009-10-22 17:38:27

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Best way to implement a Calendar interface using Google Cal feeds for events?

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