For more than one reason.
Firstly, it's good for me, but secondly, it's great for the Coranto community, to find a way to get Coranto interacting with a system like phpBB...
Here's the skinny:
I've a site that requires a monthly scheduling system, that then gets displayed on a "calendar list". Because there are dozens of events each month, I worked up a php script that does the following:
- 1) it displays each day of the coming month, with options for TWO events per day.
2) Each option contains a series of fields (mostly pulldowns) allowing for each event to be populated.
3) Once submitted, all events are in an array, which is manipulated a few times, and the schedule does a few things:
- a) Posts a list of events in the phpBB3 forums
b) Creates a flatfile list of events for a separate page (flatfile so I could later go in and edit the contents with Coranto, if need be, but that didn't quite work out--separate story)
c) Sorts events into a set of three (or more) locations, and outputs them in CSV format--to be manually converted to XSL format for final review--a separate file for each location.
Now, I'm determined to change the way things are output there, to an actual calendar format. While there are many apps put there written for php, and many that interact with phpBB3 itself, this seems like an opportune time to utilize a calendar software I'm familiar with, smcCal, and Coranto.
My main stumbling block, though, is how to take my php array, and submit it as separate Coranto news items for use with the calendar?
OF COURSE, I could always just enter each event separately, but that is NOT an option. As I've mentioned, with dozens of events per month, that is extremely time consuming, and a step back for me.
Anyone with any ideas of where to begin?
I was considering taking a look at newsgen, to see how the random events were posted, but I'm really quite simple when it comes to perl...
In my search, I've come across serialize() for php, and this method of moving data back and forth:
http://hurring.com/scott/code/perl/serialize/
Not sure if this is the right direction, but if it is, this could be a good breakthorough...thoughts?