Help! - Ideas please - multiple date and time entry alternative
Hi
Background:
i am building a site for a festival taking place for 3 days next summer. there are a multitude of events/workshops taking place over those 3 days in a number of venues. these events are added to the site grouped by discipline and each event may occur once or more, on one or more of the 3 days.
i.e. a workshop can occur at 10:30 to 13:00 and 14:00 to 18:00 on Friday, 10:00 to 13:00 on Saturday and 14:00 to 17:30 on Sunday.
Problem:
I need to be able to allow easy entry of single/multiple event times each of which include:
the day
the start time
the end time
I have tried the following:
- uComponents multiple date picker [no end time]
- uComponents textstring array
- sub document types for each time for the event
... among others, none of which are any good really, for this particular problem.
My thoughts are perhaps that something like the uComponents textstring array but with dropdowns would be perfect. i.e.
dropdown 1 - days [list of the three days/dates]
dropdown 2 - start time [list of times: 09:00, 09:15, 09:30; 09:45 etc.]
dropdown 3 - end time [as above]
[obviously the datatype would allow multiple rows as per the uComponents textstring array]I have managed to cobble together something which works, but it is just not easy to use [calendar pop-up defaults to today, not 6 months time, have to set the date for the start and finish time for each instance of that event, even if they are on the same day]
Can you help?
has anyone done this before, or does anyone know of a datatype which i have missed or do you just have an alternative approach?
i am not a back-end coder, so writing my own datatype is not really an option at the moment, but if this is the only way, could you point me in the direction of a step-by-step?
@Stephen - thank you, but i don't think that the Business starter kit helps with the particular issue that i need multiple day + start + end per day in an easy and quick format. the date/time picker always seems to default to the current date which means that for any single occurence of an event i have to:
click to open the calendar
clcik several times to navigate to the middle of next year
click the actual date box
slide the time sliders
click 'choose
... twice, once for the start, once for the end.
this is similar to what i have at the moment, but because the calendar is not 'limit-able' to the three days in question for the festival this takes far longer than it should, particularly as there are as many as 120 events, many of which have multiple occurences across the 3 days, this does not seem a particularly elegant solution for the client.
@SC Web Team - thank you too, i had considered this, but as i say, i am not really .net, so i was saving this for a 'last resort'
BUT...
i think i may have a solution in the uComponents DataType Grid which i have not fully tried yet, but seems to be almost exactly what i described in my original post - i think it will allow me to combine 3 dropdowns, one for the day, one for the start and one for the finish time.
Help! - Ideas please - multiple date and time entry alternative
Hi
Background:
i am building a site for a festival taking place for 3 days next summer. there are a multitude of events/workshops taking place over those 3 days in a number of venues. these events are added to the site grouped by discipline and each event may occur once or more, on one or more of the 3 days.
i.e. a workshop can occur at 10:30 to 13:00 and 14:00 to 18:00 on Friday, 10:00 to 13:00 on Saturday and 14:00 to 17:30 on Sunday.
Problem:
I need to be able to allow easy entry of single/multiple event times each of which include:
I have tried the following:
- uComponents multiple date picker [no end time]
- uComponents textstring array
- sub document types for each time for the event
... among others, none of which are any good really, for this particular problem.
My thoughts are perhaps that something like the uComponents textstring array but with dropdowns would be perfect. i.e.
[obviously the datatype would allow multiple rows as per the uComponents textstring array]I have managed to cobble together something which works, but it is just not easy to use [calendar pop-up defaults to today, not 6 months time, have to set the date for the start and finish time for each instance of that event, even if they are on the same day]
Can you help?
has anyone done this before, or does anyone know of a datatype which i have missed or do you just have an alternative approach?
i am not a back-end coder, so writing my own datatype is not really an option at the moment, but if this is the only way, could you point me in the direction of a step-by-step?
Thanks
I dont know of any data types but I recently completed a site that does what you want using doc types and data types.
http://www.cowglensportsclub.com/events.aspx
I also adapated the events section to manage the fixtures section, very similar but with additional info.
http://www.cowglensportsclub.com/fixtures.aspx
ALL of this is available in the Business starte kit, i'd say 80% of the work is done and you can adapt to suit your needs.
Hope this helps.
S
With a bit of tweaking you might be able to adapt this plugin - http://our.umbraco.org/projects/backoffice-extensions/openinghours
Thanks both for your replies.
@Stephen - thank you, but i don't think that the Business starter kit helps with the particular issue that i need multiple day + start + end per day in an easy and quick format. the date/time picker always seems to default to the current date which means that for any single occurence of an event i have to:
Yeah I appreciate the slightly fuddled way you create an event...be interested in how you get on with the Datagrid...
S
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