THE WEB CALENDAR PROJECT Presented by: Jasmine Thomas Supervisor: 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 to the mailing list moderator IMAP mail server List moderator approves the event notice, and submits it Event notice is mailed out to all subscribers of the list and it is archived Mailing list archive 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 Student logs onto Web Calendar, hosted on the University’s Official site and submits an event notification Web Calendar WEB CALENDAR

Mailing list archive Database Component Integration web server

PROBLEM ENVIRONMENT Events List – Mailing List (Mailman) Web Calendar – HTML, Perl Scripts, MySQL database. Apache Web server + Unix systems

PHP/PERL Database Mailing list archive TECHNOLOGIES USED Apache web servers on Unix box MailmanMySQL

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

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]

'/\ \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…

'/\ \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??