New FLEXIcontent field plugin: time

I developed a new field plugin that implements a simple time field. It's very basic, but has the major advantage of validating the time entered and ensuring it works.

The field consists simply of a text box where the user should put a time in the format HH:MM (no seconds, 24 hour time). Any input that doesn't match that format will be parsed and turned into that format; hopefully it should correctly interpret a range of invalid inputs (230, for example, will be correctly translated into 02:30). If it can't it will just set the time as 00:00.

For the reasons of the project I was working on, I removed the functionality that allows multiple values for the field (instead, we just use multiple fields; ie, a "start-time" field and an "end-time" field); if someone wants it, they can either add it themselves or contact me and I can try to find time to do it.

Download the plugin

To install it, just use the normal Joomla installer and then publish the plugin. You should then be able to add a new field of type "Time", and hopefully everything else will be clear.

coooooollllll
can you post some image of admin option ?
regards

But of course! Here's a screenshot of the item edit field for my 'event' item type, which uses the time field:



As you can see, I'm using the field for an event management (calendar) system I built with FLEXIcontent. Here's what that that system looks like from the front-end:



and with tooltip hover:



I'll be trying to package this up into something more portable (right now it relies on hard-coded field names and some other things that prevent it from being portable) and when I do, I'll post about it in these forums.

Andrew,

What are the "ds_store" files for?

You wrote a calendar for Flexicontent that works with your time field plugin. It needs some packaging up? Why not release it as-is and call it an alpha version?

Well done!

Are you able to push your calendar to an ical?

Many thanks!
-Bob

bbloom wrote: What are the "ds_store" files for?

Mac junk.
Just delete them from each sub-directory, and delete the _MACOSX folder.
Mac users have to do something special to create ZIPs without the junk files.

These files can sometimes cause Joomla extension installation issues.
(some long discussions in the Joomla 1.5 bug tracker)
So it is a good idea to delete them and repackage the ZIP file before installing.

.

Ah, thank you kenmcd!

-Bob

yes it's realy a great field !!!!
you build your calendar view with a composant ?
Thanks

kenmcd wrote: Mac junk.
Just delete them from each sub-directory, and delete the _MACOSX folder.
Mac users have to do something special to create ZIPs without the junk files.

Sorry I left those in; I don't always remember to clean up a folder before I make a package. A more accurate description than "Mac junk" would be "metadata used to remember display attributes of the contents of a folder", but for the purposes of a joomla extension, they are junk. I can confirm that the package, exactly as I uploaded it, will not have any issues when being installed from the joomla backend (nor will the .DS_Store files be copied to your joomla site folder). Even so, I've updated the package at the link above with a clean version of the plugin.

Re: the more important issues:

bbloom wrote: Why not release it as-is and call it an alpha version?

I will basically do that, just a bit too busy right now. Hopefully over the weekend or the beginning of next week, I'll get around to it. There are two things holding me back: 1st, there's still some stuff that I really should make into parameters, rather than hard-coding them; and 2nd, it will require a bit of explanation/documentation I think, so I'll need to find time to write that up. Overall, though, I must say that I'm pretty happy with the results, so I'm quite eager to make it available to others and get their feedback. It's pretty exciting, because it makes it possible to have an easy to use, intuitive, and very well integrated event management component, without having to have another component. FLEXIcontent is powerful stuff.

micker wrote: yes it's realy a great field !!!!
you build your calendar view with a composant ?

So glad to hear you like it! If I correctly understand your question, the calendar view is a pure flexicontent template, and it is used for a category page. I've created an item type called 'event' and a category called 'calendar' and assigned that category to use the calendar template.

could you share your template ?
regards

micker wrote: could you share your template ?
regards

Of course, and sorry it took so long. Check it out here: New events calendar template

Putting all the hard-coded stuff in parameters, adding multiple view options, and adding other capabilities to make it more flexible and useful for others in general, wound up taking a long time and creating lots of bugs, but it seems pretty good now. Consider it a beta release.

Hope it's useful to some of you!