Custom Format Strings

This article describes the custom format strings in the latest events module - and makes reference to incorporating elements from club addons e.g. custom fields, images

If your format string is being ignored MAKE SURE you have 'Use settings below' checked in your module parameters.

Fields

The custom formatting strings are based around substituting field codes with their values from an event - the available fields are:

• ${startDate}, ${endDate} = The start and end date/time of the event repeat
• ${eventDate} = The date being looked at - if you are showing events over the next 7 days and a multiday event has already started then this date may be midway through the event.
• ${title} = The event title (automatically converted to a link if you set the config option for this)
• ${category} = The event category
• ${calendar} = The name of the calendar the event is in
• ${contact} = The event contact details
• ${content} = The event description.  If you want the content to be truncated/cut short at a certain length then use something like ${content(120|...)} - this will cut the content to only 120 characters and then put ... if the content is longer.
• ${addressInfo}, ${location} = The event location
• ${extraInfo} = Extra information
• ${createdByAlias}, ${createdByUserName}, ${createdByUserEmail}, ${createdByUserEmailLink} = details about the creator of the event
• ${eventDetailLink} = A link to the event detail.  So you could do this <a href="http://www.mywebsite.com/${eventDetailLink}" target="_self">${thumbimg1}</a> to link a thumbnail image to the event detail page.
• ${color}= The hex code of the event colour.
• $(countdown) = The time until an event starts. e.g. ${countdown(Days to go %d)} or ${countdown(Time to go %d days %h hours and %m minutes)}.  If you include %nopast in the format then for events that have started/finished you will get a different message based on the translation of JEV_EVENT_ALREADY_STARTED e.g. "This event started -4 days ago"
• ${categoryimage} - Used to show the image assigned to the category, from the category manager.
• ${duration(%d Days %h hours %m minutes)} - used to show the duration of an event.  You can use %wd for the whole number of days

Special Formatting

All the date fields take formatting options e.g. ${endDate(%I:%M%p)} o r${startDate(D, M jS, Y, @g:ia)}.  There are 2 formatting systems you can use based on the php "date" and "strftime" functions - see  http://php.net/manual/en/function.date.php and http://php.net/manual/en/function.strftime.php . You should not mix and match there within a specific field

Hiding fields with no values

Sometimes you might want to hide a field or change it's output if there is no value. The Latest Events Module uses the same system as: the custom layouts for handling missing values. So for example you could have:

${CONTACT# The contact for this event is: %s# There is no contact for this event at present#}

Which if there is a contact called 'Tony Partridge' for example, it would output:

The contact for this event is: Tony Partridge

And if there is no contact it would show:

There is no contact for this event at present

Conditional Fields

There is limited support for conditional output in the format string.  The module supports 3 different conditional flags:

• a = Condition on all day events
• e = Condition on events with no specified end time
• m = Condition on events multi day events

You would use [a: xxxxxxxx] to output xxxxxxxx when the condition is true or [!a: yyyy] to output yyyy when the condition is not true.

For example if we had this format string:

${startDate(%A %B %e)}[!a:, ${startDate(%l:%M %p)} - ${endDate(%l:%M %p)}]

You can 'combine' these conditions e.g.

${startDate(%A %B %e)}[!a:, ${startDate(%l:%M %p)} - ${endDate(%l:%M %p)}][a: - All Day]

Sunday September 12, 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM

and

Sunday September 12 - All Day

for an event with no end time.

You can also convert this to 24 hour by using:

${startDate(%A %B %e)}[!a:, ${startDate(%H:%M)} - ${endDate(%H:%M)}][a: - All Day]

Which would show:

Sunday September 12, 10:00 - 18:00

and

Sunday September 12 - All Day

You cannot embed these conditions inside each other.

Club Addon Fields

Managed Locations Addon

The following fields are supported ${loc_title}, ${loc_id}, ${loc.street}, ${loc_desc}, ${loc_postcode}, ${loc_city}, ${loc_country}, ${loc_state}, ${loc_phone}, ${loc_image}, $loc_url}

Standard Image/File Uploads

You must enable the display of images in list views in the plugin parameters if you want to use thumbnail images in your latest events module.

The following fields are available: The images as full html image tags = ${imageurl1}, ${thumbimg1} and the URLs of the images are  ${imageimg1}, ${imagethumb1}. Note if you are wanting to show the default set image if no image has been set, use the tags in this format: ${JEV_LIST_THUMBNAIL_1}

As of Standard Image and Files Version 3.5 we had added a new smart method to get images.

You can now use: ${JEV_SIZEDIMAGE_1;50x50} which would automatically resize the image at 50x50 if it doesn't exist already. notice the _1 so you would change this to say _2 for image 2 and so on.

Custom Fields

You must enable the display of custom fields in list views in the plugin parameters and use the special new version of the module in the custom fields download area.

For a field with a name of field1 you use this code ${field1}

If you wish to get the value you set within the field you can use: ${field1_raw}

JEvents Tags

You must enable the display of tags in list views in the plugin parameters.

Use the code ${jevtagstext}, ${jevtags} or ${jevtagsraw} - the first of these includes a label as well as the list of tags.

Using Codes From the Layout Editor

Finally if the fields you are interested in are not listed above then you can use the 'codes' from the JEvents layout editor (for list views) in the custom format string.  For example

• to show the attendee count from RSVP Pro you can use ${ATTENDCOUNT}
• to show the registration closing date you can use ${REGCLOSING}
• to show the managed people summar you can use ${JEV_PEOPLE_SUMMARY}
• and so on.