Forum OpenACS Q&A: OpenAcs 4.6 Calendar

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1: OpenAcs 4.6 Calendar
Posted by Andrew Zeon on 09/13/02 12:51 PM
How stable is the OACS 4.6 Calendar? Are there a lot of bugs? Are the
main functions bug free?

Thanks.

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2: Response to OpenAcs 4.6 Calendar (response to 1)
Posted by Ben Adida on 09/13/02 04:06 PM
I'd say it's getting to be fairly stable. But then again I'm biased :)

I fixed up a number of things in the calendar when working on dotLRN,
simplifying some stuff, cleaning up the widgets, etc... The main functions do
work.

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3: Response to OpenAcs 4.6 Calendar (response to 1)
Posted by Andrew Zeon on 09/13/02 04:59 PM
Ben, for my thesis I'm adding a SMS alert function to the calendar.
I will be using a SMS carriage provider here in Sydney to send SMS
messages. If I put this function in OACS 4.5, will it be difficult
to port it to OACS 4.6? Or, is it just better off starting with OACS
4.6?

Thanks.

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4: Response to OpenAcs 4.6 Calendar (response to 1)
Posted by defunct defunct on 09/13/02 05:09 PM
If you've used the OpenACS SMS Broker, then it won't matter.

If you haven't.... well...... you get all you deserve ;o)

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5: Response to OpenAcs 4.6 Calendar (response to 1)
Posted by defunct defunct on 09/13/02 05:11 PM
Sorry... should have explained further.

If you've used the sms broker then all you need do is, at whatever point you want to send out an SMS you put

smsq_submit_ascii <paramaters>

in the script....

Thats it... not OpenACS4.5 or 4.6 specific...

Although, that's not going to make much of a thesis is it? ;0)

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6: Response to OpenAcs 4.6 Calendar (response to 1)
Posted by Andrew Zeon on 09/13/02 05:24 PM
But, every SMS carriage provider has a different way of
communicating with an application. So, I would still need to code
this? Am I correct? What services does the SMS broker package
exactly provide?

Thanks.

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7: Response to OpenAcs 4.6 Calendar (response to 1)
Posted by Tom Jackson on 09/13/02 05:24 PM

Calendar has changes quite a lot from 4.5 to 4.6. I am working to fix any bugs in 4.6 for this weekend's freeze. If you want to see how it is working in 4.6, without loading it, sign up at iunicycle.com.

Things that still need to be fixed are:

  • ad_page_contract complains that the start time is after the end time when trying to add an all day event (no time info).
  • Still a few url encoding bugs for in week view.
  • Better error message or options for the "Go To" search.

Features missing that need to be added (for 4.7?):

  • Email alerts
  • User Preferences
  • Multiple calendar view which combines your choice of calendars
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8: Response to OpenAcs 4.6 Calendar (response to 1)
Posted by defunct defunct on 09/13/02 05:28 PM
Andrew,

Unless the provider your using is a real cowboy outfit, then they're most likely to offer an XML, XML-RPC or a TCP method.

In which case you probably looking at now more than an hours work making the code match the interface..

So pretty much all you want is there.

Or, even simpler, just use a GSM modem.. There's a good seimens unit for about £40. And the SMSBroker already has the interface for that.

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9: Response to OpenAcs 4.6 Calendar (response to 1)
Posted by defunct defunct on 09/13/02 05:30 PM
As for services... well it pretty much does everything you need. Queuing, interfaces, retries, failure case handling, callback based event model... ya de ya de ya...

You get the idea...

Just install it, connect it to your provider, and its really that simple...

Both for inbound and outbound..

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10: Response to OpenAcs 4.6 Calendar (response to 1)
Posted by C. R. Oldham on 09/13/02 05:34 PM
Is anyone aware of US carriers that provide TCP or XML/RPC based methods for SMS? (I know it's not really SMS since most of the US is CDMA/TDMA not GSM...)  I can't find anything anywhere on this for big carriers like Verizon and Sprint.  T-Mobile is already GSM, and AT&T is moving from TDMA to GSM...
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11: Response to OpenAcs 4.6 Calendar (response to 1)
Posted by Andrew Zeon on 09/13/02 05:44 PM
Well, my thesis involves both SMS and email alert. My priority is
SMS, but if it is as easy as what Simon says, then I will be working
on email alert.
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12: Response to OpenAcs 4.6 Calendar (response to 1)
Posted by Andrew Zeon on 09/13/02 05:52 PM
Tom, where is OpenAcs 4.6 with the latest Calendar available? Where
will updates be posted? I'm relatively new to OpenAcs so I'm not
quite sure where things are kept.

Thanks.

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13: Response to OpenAcs 4.6 Calendar (response to 1)
Posted by Ben Adida on 09/13/02 05:55 PM
You can get the latest calendar from the CVS. By the way, multiple calendars
is mostly implemented (and working if you use the APIs to create calendars -
as in dotLRN). The issue is figuring out the best UI to create and manage
multiple calendars (the old one was kind of a disaster).
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14: Response to OpenAcs 4.6 Calendar (response to 1)
Posted by Andrew Zeon on 09/13/02 05:59 PM
Whereabouts is the CVS? I went to https://openacs.org/ and clicked
on 'Browse CVS' but no CVS tree comes up.
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15: Response to OpenAcs 4.6 Calendar (response to 1)
Posted by Jeff Davis on 09/13/02 06:20 PM
You can do a checkout from anonymous cvs at 
 cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@openacs.org:/cvsroot co openacs-4
which will give you everything or 
cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@openacs.org:/cvsroot co acs-core 
cd openacs-4/packages
cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@openacs.org:/cvsroot co calendar
to get the just the core and the calendar module.

the nightly tarballs are currently broken but hopefully will be fixed soon. They are at https://openacs.org/sdm/nightly-tarballs.tcl?package_id=9

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16: Response to OpenAcs 4.6 Calendar (response to 1)
Posted by Tom Jackson on 09/13/02 07:00 PM

I should mention that all calendars are combined in the 4.6 version, which is probably what most people want anyway. The 4.5 version kept switching back to some default after a few clicks around, so it wasn't that useful. If anyone is targeting a specific version, probably the 4.7 version would be better. 4.6 is going to be incomplete, mainly because notification isn't integrated.

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17: Response to OpenAcs 4.6 Calendar (response to 1)
Posted by Rafael Calvo on 09/16/02 06:05 AM
Tom, Ben

Due to the error described in https://openacs.org/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=0006Cc
it is hard to do much with it (on PG)
Is anyone working on this bug?

I should mention that Andrew's "thesis" is a very short undergraduate project, that in Australia they call "thesis", it is not postgrad studies!

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18: Response to OpenAcs 4.6 Calendar (response to 1)
Posted by defunct defunct on 09/16/02 11:09 AM
For whoever enquired about Amercian SMS... you don't necessarily need an Amercian supplier. I beleive SMSDirect (www.smsdirect.uk.com) is capable of handling messages bound to most major states.... There are certainly others.
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19: Response to OpenAcs 4.6 Calendar (response to 1)
Posted by Andrew Zeon on 09/22/02 10:02 AM
Where can I get OpenACS SMS broker?

Thanks.

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20: Response to OpenAcs 4.6 Calendar (response to 1)
Posted by defunct defunct on 09/23/02 11:07 AM
The latest version is at

http://213.107.207.131/download

Cheers

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21: Response to OpenAcs 4.6 Calendar (response to 1)
Posted by Tom Jackson on 09/23/02 05:13 PM

Rafael, the thread you mention isn't there, but an error listed in this thread: https://openacs.org/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=0006Jt&topic_id=12&topic=OpenACS%204%2e0%20Design has been fixed. I fixed all the bugs I have found over the weekend, including one that didn't allow you to add an event without a date (all day event). Please use the instructions on the above thread to download via cvs the current up-to-date version of calendar and acs-datetime.

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22: Response to OpenAcs 4.6 Calendar (response to 1)
Posted by Rafael Calvo on 09/24/02 07:48 AM
Tom
<br>
I just did an update from cvs. with a quick scan I found a couple of things.
<br>
The lines that separate each hour in full calendar have dissapearred.
Also, Sync with outlook gives me an error that seems related to timezones (are you already working on that?):
<pre>
Database operation "0or1row" failed (exception NSDB, "Query was not a statement returning rows.")
          while executing
      "ns_pg_bind 0or1row nsdb0 {
      select to_char(timezone__utc_to_local(tz_id, utc_time), :format)
      from timezones,
      (select timezone__convert_to_utc(tz_id, :t..."
          ("uplevel" body line 1)
          invoked from within
      "uplevel $ulevel [list ns_pg_bind $type $db $sql"
          invoked from within
      "db_exec 0or1row $db $full_name $sql"
          invoked from within
      "set selection [db_exec 0or1row $db $full_name $sql]"
          ("uplevel" body line 2)
          invoked from within
      "uplevel 1 $code_block "
          invoked from within
      "db_with_handle db {
              set selection [db_exec 0or1row $db $full_name $sql]
          }"
          (procedure "db_string" line 7)
          invoked from within
      "db_string adjust_timezone {}"
          (procedure "adjust_timezone" line 3)
          invoked from within
      "adjust_timezone -timestamp $cal_item(full_start_date) -format $date_format -user_tz "Universal""
          (procedure "calendar::outlook::format_item" line 9)
</pre>
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23: Response to OpenAcs 4.6 Calendar (response to 1)
Posted by Tom Jackson on 09/24/02 04:51 PM

Rafael, when you report a database error, you need to capture from your aolserver log file. The actual error is before the error you are showing. Tail your server log file and get the first error that shows up.

I haven't seen the line disappearing problem, but Outlook I do not have, nor have I looked at what this page is supposed to do. What browser are you using, and if possible forward, post or publish the full html that is produced that has the line problem, maybe it is a browser issue.