THE WEB CALENDAR PROJECT

Presented by: Jasmine ThomasSupervisor: John Ebden

MOTIVATION

• Need for a common platform on which the events held within the University can be advertised

• Staff – Events List Mailing List• Students – Web Calendar

• Options were to create something new or configure the existing technologies to work together

My Project

Staff member submits event notification as an e-mail to the mailing list moderator

IMAP mail server

List moderator approves the event notice, and submits it

Event notice is mailed out to allsubscribers of the list and it is archived

Mailing list archive

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EVENTS LIST – MAILING LIST

Database

Event notice stored in a backend database, held for approval by calendar administrator

Administrator logs on And approves the event notice, event notice is now viewable on the Web Calendar

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Student logs onto Web Calendar,hosted on the University’s Official siteand submits an event notification

Web Calendar

WEB CALENDAR

Mailing list archive Database

Component Integration

web server web server

PROBLEM ENVIRONMENT

• Events List – Mailing List (Mailman)

• Web Calendar – HTML, Perl Scripts, MySQL database.

• Apache Web server + Unix systems

PHP/PERLDatabase

Mailing list archive

TECHNOLOGIES USED

Apache web servers on Unix box

Mailman MySQL

PHP

• Low and smooth learning curve• String manipulations capabilities

(Regular Expressions)• Ease with which it can interface with

databases (MySQL)• Intelligent error reporting – debugging

easier• Compatibility with Apache• Cross platform – build on Windows and

port it to Unix

Events-L available at http://listserv.ru.ac.za/pipermail/events-l/

ARCHIVE

MONTHLY SUBMISSIONS

ARCHIVE

INDIVIDUAL EVENT DETAILS

MONTHLY SUBMISSIONS

ARCHIVE

DATE ISSUE...

Date Issue – Possible Solutions

-- Educate the users

-- Changing source code for mailman

-- Setup a web template

EDUCATING THE USERS dd/mm/yyyy: event subject

Users being users…[dd/mm/yyyy]: [event subject]

dd/mm/yyyy, dd/mm/yy,d/mm/yyyy, d/mm/yy, dd/m/yyyy, dd/m/yy,d/m/yyyy,d/m/yy.

[date format]_[:]_[event subject]

'/\<A\s+HREF=\"(\d+)\.html\"\>\s*\[Events-L\]\s+

((\d{2}|\d{1})\/(\d{2}|\d{1})\/(\d{4}|\d{2}))

[\s*][:][\s*](.+?)\s*$/'

REGULAR EXPRESSION

Location, Starting time, Host, Reasons for hosting the event etc.

Two options

1. build the link to the file with the details

2. extract all the details from file

MORE DETAILS ABOUT THE EVENT…

<!--beginarticle --> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

----------------------------------------------- <!--endarticle -->

'/\<\!\-\-beginarticle\-\-\>\n+/'

'/\<\!\-\-endarticle\-\-\>\n+/'

IMPLEMENTATION

• Unix corn command was written to execute the script at regular intervals.

• No hassles porting PHP from Windows to Unix.

to prove that it is all working…

EXTENSIONS TO THE PROJECT

• creative feature that can be deployed on the University’s main page to increase awareness of the Web Calendar’s improved functionality.

• central moderator for both the Web Calendar and the Events List.

• change the look of the Web Calendar to integrate better with the University’s purple theme.

• avoid duplicate submissions – i.e. reminders posted on the events list.

QUESTIONS??