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Google Calendar Not Too Flexible
I spent most of yesterday working on the code for the ‘Game Release Calendar‘ on MODSonline.com. Originally, this was a simple calendar system where you could input the data about any event and it would be displayed with details. You know.. .a basic calendar. However, the problem with such a beast is that game release dates are never a sure thing. They change and that can be a problem when dealing with all the games that are on the market.
I thought the solution would be to let someone else do the work. That someone else happened to be a few different people on Google Calendars who already update the game release dates. All I would have to do is tap into that data and display it on the site.
This is where the difficulty arose. The Google Calendar feed only outputs 25 calendar entries. Apparently, these are the most recently entered dates which may not be the 25 events closest to today’s date. They could be for next year or last year… depending on when the person entered or updated the calendar. This is no good. There are at least 5 games coming out this month and I could only see 2.
In the end, I was forced to simply put the calendar on the site straight from Google. At least then all of the dates are showing. I could have saved myself at least 3 hours. oh well.
*** UPDATE ***
I went back to google calendars and did some more searching. I found that if I could use the ical export feature, I could get most if not all of the calendar entries imported into my own calendar system for the MODSonline.com website. So that’s just what I did. In the end, it worked out. There was more coding involved in this method, but the results are what matter. Now, every night while I sleep, the calendar automatically updates for me. cool.
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