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#8376 Spreadsheet plugin

Parent Category:
DPCalendar
Category:
Calendar plugins
Last Updated:
Allon Moritz, Wednesday, 26 March 2025 10:39 (4 weeks ago.)
Created:
Tuesday, 02 February 2021 15:58
Hits:
3445

This feature is part of the DPCalendar Professional subscription.
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Introduction

The spreadsheet plugin creates out of a spreadsheet file, events which can be displayed in DPCalendar. The file has to be locally on your web server.

The file on your server must have the proper permissions to access it as web server user. Make sure that the file is accessible to DPCalendar through your Joomla hosting server.

It can also export events, bookings, tickets or locations, either from the front end lists or the back end administration tables.

File Format

The spreadsheet plugin comes with an example Opendocument format file which has a structure that works out of the box. For every spreadsheet calendar you can define a column name which is mapped to an event attribute. For example if the title of the event is in a column with the name sps_title then fill that value as option in the external calendar configuration.

Remarks

The following list gives some practical hints about the data in the Spreadsheet file:

  • The date must be in ISO 8601 format
  • All day events must have the end date one day later as this is how ical data is represented.
  • The alias setting is only used during import
  • The timezones must be set correctly
  • The CSV structure must be readable by a CSV parser

Main options

  • Uri
    Per calendar there is a field which defines the uri of the file. If the file is on your server it must have proper permissions to access it. Make sure that the file is accessible to DPCalendar through your Joomla hosting server. If the file is not physically on your server you can define an url like http://example.com/data/test.xlsx. To get remote files the server must be able to open connections to the remote server. Ask your hosting company first if outbound connections are included in your hosting plan.
  • Timezone
    When the events in the CSV file are defined in a different timezone, it's possible to adjust that parameter here.

Libre Office, Openoffice or Excel

Spreadsheet files are in binary format and can be edited with Excel or Libre Office apps. In either case the file will be broken down into cells.

Export of DPCalendar data

The Spreadsheet plugin also supports the export of DPCalendar entities like events, locations, bookings or tickets in the back end and front end. It is possible to setup unlimited configurations, each configuration will then appear as export button in the front or back end lists.

While configuring the plugin, it is also possible to fine tune the export behavior. The site admin can define the fields with a custom ordering, if HTML tags should be stripped and configure the output of custom fields in each configuration.

If the exported data should be customized, it is possible to put a PHP script with the name data.php into the folder /administrator/templates/atumn/html/plg_dpcalendar_spreadsheet. Strong PHP skills are required as it requires knowledge how to use language constructs and the MVC of Joomla.

Spreadsheet export

DPCalendar Options

These settings are the same for every calendar configured in the plugin.

Uri [Type: Text]
An uri to an online file like http://www.example.com/files/data.csv or a local path like plugins/dpcalendar/csv/examples/example.csv. If the uri is a file and starts with a '/' DPCalendar will interpret it as an absolute path otherwise relative to the joomla installation folder.
Delimiter [Type: Text] [Default: ,]
The delimiter of the CSV file.
Enclosure [Type: Text] [Default: "]
The enclosure of the CSV file.
Has Header Row [Type: Radio] [Default: Yes]
Does the CSV file have a header row.
The following options are available:
  1. Yes
  2. No
Timezone [Type: Timezone] [Default: UTC]
The timezone of the events in the file.
The following options are available:
  1. UTC
Title Column [Type: Text] [Default: title]
The column for the title.
Start Date Column [Type: Text] [Default: start_date]
The column for the start date.
End Date Column [Type: Text] [Default: end_date]
The column for the end date.
All Day Column [Type: Text] [Default: all_day]
The column for the all day.
Show End Time Column [Type: Text] [Default: show_end_time]
The column for the show end time.
Description Column [Type: Text] [Default: description]
The column for the description.
RRule Column [Type: Text] [Default: rrule]
The column for the recurrence rule.
Location Column [Type: Text] [Default: location]
The column for the location.
Url Column [Type: Text] [Default: url]
The column for the url.
Alias Column [Type: Text] [Default: alias]
The column for the alias.
Colour Column [Type: Text] [Default: color]
The column for the colour.
SSL Verification [Type: Radio] [Default: Yes]
Is SSL verification activated? Disable only when you know what you are doing as it can cause security issues. When disabled the connection the remote host can't be trusted anymore.
The following options are available:
  1. Yes
  2. No

Plugin Options

Export [Type: Subform]

Plugin Options

Caching [Type: List] [Default: Joomla]
Select whether to cache the calendar data.
The following options are available:
  1. Joomla
  2. Database
  3. Never
Cache Time [Type: Text] [Default: 900]
The time for the cache in sec.
Sync Start [Type: Text] [Default: -3 year]
The relative start date to sync from.
Sync End [Type: Text] [Default: +3 year]
The relative end date to sync from.
Sync Steps [Type: Text] [Default: 1 year]
The sync steps.

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