Using The CodeIgniter Calendar Class

The CodeIgniter calendar class is available for creating data-driven calendars for your web apps. What follows is a walk through on how you can implement the calendar class for a simple tasks web app.

The CodeIgniter calendar class is available for creating data-driven calendars for your web apps. What follows is a walk through on how I implemented the calendar class for a simple tasks web app.

So the app we’ll create is a simple list of tasks that can be checked off when completed. And a way to keep some notes for the task too.

I’m going to assume you already have some experience with PHP. It would be useful if you know the basics of CodeIgniter too.

Setting Up For The CodeIgniter Calendar

CodeIgniter doesn’t take much setting up. Here are the basic tasks:

1. Create a new local, virtual domain (I called mine http://tasks.dev). I use MAMP Pro, but any local setup that you would normally use will suffice.
2. Create a new MySQL database called tasks.
3. Add a table called tasks_list. (Schema below)
4. Configure the database in application/config/database.php
5. Add the database and sessions library to application/config/autoload.php. Also, autoload the url helper.
6. Add a .htaccess for pretty url’s, and set up the site info in application/config/config.php.

Database Schema

CREATE TABLE `tasks_list` (
    `id` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
    `title` varchar(200) DEFAULT NULL,
    `body` text,
    `due` date DEFAULT NULL,
    `created_at` timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
    `completed` tinyint(1) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
     PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB

Implementing The CodeIgniter Calendar

The calendar we’ll create will contain a month display, with the ability to click through through other months with a simple hyperlink. CodeIgniter’s calendar supports that. I also wanted to attach a link to tasks stored in the database on the individual days of the month:

To get the basic calendar working we can get some setting up done on the constructor of the welcome controller:

<?php
public function __construct()
{
    parent:: __construct();
    $this->load->model('tasks_model');
    $prefs = array (
        'show_next_prev'  => TRUE,
         'next_prev_url'   => 'http://tasks.dev/welcome/index'
    );

    $this->load->library('calendar', $prefs);
}

Here, we are setting up some preferences and passing them to the calendar class. We want the next and previous links, and they will need a url to operate on. That is what is being passed in the prefs array. We then load the calendar class and pass in those preferences.

I opted to do this in the constructor so that I could call the calendar from any method in the controller.

You’ll notice that I have also loaded a model called tasks_model which we’ll be using shortly.

To generate the calendar, we just need this:

$this->calendar->generate($this->uri->segment(3), $this->uri->segment(4));

The uri segments are values passed in from the next and previous links. What happens if we are on the home page though? There will be no uri segments in that case. Well, we can check for them, and then offer an alternative:

$month = (!$this->uri->segment(4)) ? date('m') : $this->uri->segment(4);

The ternary operator checks to see if the 4th uri segment is set, if it’s not, we use the date function to get the current month. Otherwise, we can use the 4th segment. CodeIgniter will load the current month for us.

Notice also, that we are retrieving the tasks for the given month via our tasks_model. If we get no tasks, we just load the calendar normally, if there are tasks, then we pass in the array of links to “wire up” the links to the active days.

Getting The Tasks

Here is the model:

<?php
class Tasks_Model extends CI_Model
{
    public function __construct()
    {
        parent:: __construct();
    }

    public function get_tasks($month)
    {
        $sql = "SELECT DAY(due) As day, due, title FROM tasks_list WHERE MONTH(due) = " . $month;
        $q = $this->db->query($sql);
        $num = $q->num_rows();
		
        if($num > 0)
        {
            foreach($q->result() as $row)
            {
                $data[] = $row;
            }

            foreach($data as $d)
            {
                $out[$d->day] = (int)$d->day;
                $out[$d->day] = "http://tasks.dev/welcome/show/" . date('Y/m/d', strtotime($d->due));
            }
            return $out;
        }
        else
        {
            return 0;
        }		
    }

    public function day_tasks($day)
    {
        $sql = "SELECT * FROM tasks_list WHERE due = '" . $day . "'";
        $q = $this->db->query($sql);
        if($q->num_rows() > 0)
        {
            foreach($q->result() as $row)
            {
                $data[] = $row;
            }
            return $data;
        }
        else
        {
            return 0;
        }
    }
}

I’ll say straight away that there is probably a better way of doing this. I did try several things, but getting the data first, and then creating the array fro the calendar seemed to work best. The array of data that gets passed to the calendar has very precise requirements. Notice that I’m ensuring that the day is definitely an integer.

I’m also adding the date from the due field of the database at the end of the url, so we can properly retrieve the tasks for that given day.

One More Thing…

So, at this stage we have a calendar, and we have days with tasks linked… to nowhere yet. Well, the hyperlink is fine, but we need a new method in the controller so that we can pass the tasks for that day to a view.

Let’s have a look:

public function show()
{
    $year = $this->uri->segment(3);
    $month = $this->uri->segment(4);
    $day = $this->uri->segment(5);
    $date = $year . '-' . $month . '-' . $day;
    $data['day'] = date('d/m/Y', strtotime($date));
    $data['tasks'] = $this->tasks_model->day_tasks($date);
    $this->load->view('show', $data);
}

All that’s happening here, is we are collected the date components from the uri string, reassembling it as a date, and then sending it as a string to the view. we also send the $date variable through to our tasks_model.

There is nothing special about this method. What it does demonstrate is how important that $date variable is.

Finally…

So, there it is, a simple implementation of the CodeIgniter Calendar class. You could continue to build out this app by adding a master task list for checking items off, a form for adding tasks, and so on. Here’s some sample code.

The post Using The CodeIgniter Calendar Class appeared first on Andy Hawthorne.