Repeating Events on a Calendar???

mlg9000

I'm trying to create personal calendar and to do list. I'm having problems coming up with a database design (MySQL) and PHP coded frontend that will allow me to add events/tasks that repeat. What I'd like is pretty much a clone of yahoo mail's calendar event's repeating feature, where you have something like:

This event does not repeat.
Repeat every/2nd/3rd/... day/week/month/year

Repeat on the first/second/... mon/tue/.... of the month every week/month/year

End Date: xxx
No End Date.

I'm not sure how to approach this... Do all the work in the PHP code and just store every event/task entry for every single day in the DB?... OR Store one entry in the DB that somehow the PHP coding can figure out which days it needs to be displayed? Performance of either method will not really be an issue. This is for an home intranet with only 3-4 users. Really I'm just trying to figure out the easiest way to do the coding.

Anyone have any ideas or suggestions? Sample SQL and PHP code?

nnichols

The key to this is going to be getting your db design sorted.

You should use a model similar to the text for CRONs using a series of switches in your db table. It means that you have lots of empty fields for most entries, but because they are CHAR(1) fields it won't be a problem.

To give you an idea -

| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun | Start | End |
|-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-------+-----|
|  1  |  0  |  0  |  0  |  0  |  0  |  0  |       |     |

This would represent something that shows for every Monday with no end date set.

| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun | Start | End |
|-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-------+-----|
|  1  |  1  |  1  |  1  |  1  |  0  |  0  |       |     |

This would represent something that shows for every weekday with no end date set.

This is obviously an overly simplified example but hopefully you can see where I'm heading with it. Have a go and see how you get on.

Hope this helps

mlg9000

I thought of doing something like that. It would definitely work for tasks/events that repeat every week.

It gets much more complex when you try to go every other week, or once a year on a specific date, or every 3rd Sat of a month for example though..... Might be possible to extend this out to multiple tables though.