Release: The Events Calendar 4.5

We’ve been hard at work on Version 4.5 of The Events Calendar!

A big change in this release (and going forward) is a more focused effort on specific plugins during each release. This has a couple key advantages: we can start shipping features more frequently, but with less impact across all the plugins and it allows us to hold features until we know they are well tested and nicely refined. We think this is going to be a really nice shift!

On to the exciting details of what’s new in 4.5!


⚠️ Please Note: Due to a small bug that arose after publishing our 4.5 release, we followed up with The Events Calendar 4.5.0.2, which is the version we recommend you use.


REST API Read Support

We’ve heard your requests for WordPress Rest API support and we’re delivering our first benchmark with read-only access in The Events Calendar 4.5.

Though we’re not quite ready to support WRITE functionality, this release paves the way to continue developing full REST API support within the plugin.

Event Aggregator: Full Imports Between The Events Calendar Instances

Have you ever wanted to import events from one WordPress website to another? Now if both websites are using The Events Calendar, you can copy the event link and import it into your own site using the Other URL field in Event Aggregator. You can also import event category or tag links the same way.

import WordPress website events from other urls with Event Aggregator

Reduced File Size

We were able to cut the file size of The Events Calendar by almost 20%!

When we launched version 4.0 of The Events Calendar and introduced Event Tickets and Event Tickets Plus, we did something a little bit surprising. These two new plugins were replacing our older ticketing plugins, but also introducing the ability to run independently from The Events Calendar.

This meant that a customer running WooCommerce Tickets and updating to The Events Calendar 4.0 would need to switch over to Event Tickets. We knew our customers expected a smooth transition, so we tucked a copy of Event Tickets inside of The Events Calendar and were able to load it in situations where it was needed.

It has now been well over a year since we began that journey. Our legacy ticket users have completed their transition, removing the need for a copy of Event Tickets inside of The Events Calendar. That’s good news for all users – with this release, we’ve removed it and reduced the overall size of The Events Calendar substantially.

New Action

We’ve introduced a new action at the end of our object definitions that’s especially useful for testing:

  • tribe_events_bound_implementations

New Filters

We have a bunch of filters around the new functionality:

REST API
  • tribe_events_rest_api_enabled
  • tribe_events_rest_url_prefix
  • tribe_events_rest_use_builtin
  • tribe_rest_event_categories_data
  • tribe_rest_event_data
  • tribe_rest_event_featured_image
  • tribe_rest_event_max_per_page
  • tribe_rest_event_tags_data
  • tribe_rest_event_taxonomy_term_data
  • tribe_rest_events_archive_data
  • tribe_rest_organizer_data
  • tribe_rest_url
  • tribe_rest_venue_data
REST API Documentation
  • tribe_rest_swagger_cost_details_documentation
  • tribe_rest_swagger_date_details_documentation
  • tribe_rest_swagger_documentation
  • tribe_rest_swagger_event_documentation
  • tribe_rest_swagger_image_details_documentation
  • tribe_rest_swagger_image_size_documentation
  • tribe_rest_swagger_organizer_documentation
  • tribe_rest_swagger_term_documentation
  • tribe_rest_swagger_venue_documentation
Modified fields tracking
  • tribe_tracker_enabled
  • tribe_tracker_enabled_for_terms
  • tribe_tracker_excluded_meta_keys
  • tribe_tracker_post_types
  • tribe_tracker_taxonomies
Event Aggregator
  • tribe_aggregator_localized_data
  • tribe_aggregator_service_messages
  • tribe_aggregator_url_import_range_cap
  • tribe_aggregator_url_import_range_options
  • tribe_aggregator_url_import_range_start
  • tribe_aggregator_url_import_range_end

Newly-Removed Code

We are pretty confident that these filters and methods are not likely being used by customizers, but rather by us internally. With that in mind, we skipped our normal deprecation steps and removed these outright.

  • Removed Filter: tribe_aggregator_track_modified_fields
  • Removed Methods: Tribe__Events__Main: tribe_aggregator_track_modified_fields and maybe_load_tickets_framework
  • Removed Method: Tribe__Events__Aggregator__Service: has_service_message

Updated Views

No views were updated in this release.

Changelogs

Ready to explore the details of this release? On to the changelogs!

The Events Calendar 4.5

Feature – Event Aggregator now allows users to import by URL from other sites with The Events Calendar
Feature – Include a Events REST API endpoint for read operations
Feature – Include granular Scheduling for Event Aggregator
Fix – Prevent Event Aggregator to run on Empty Queues thus generating fatals
Fix – Categories and Tags are no longer cleared when importing with Event Aggregator
Fix – Increase consistency on Column Mapping for CSV imports
Tweak – Update Authority for modified fields now will include Organizer, Venues and Taxonomy changes
Tweak – Clean up direct calls to get events and use wrapper tribe_get_events() which has a hook for customizing
Tweak – Remove including Event Tickets for backwards compatibility as a vendor library
Tweak – Create a global ID to increase consistency on all of the imported items with Event Aggregator
Tweak – Added new filters for REST API
Tweak – Added filters for REST API Documentation
Tweak – Added filters for Modified fields tracking
Tweak – Added filters for Event Aggregator
Tweak – Removed filters for Event Aggregator
Tweak – Added actions for Initialization
Tweak – Removed methods for Tribe__Events__Main: track_event_post_field_changes, maybe_load_tickets_framework
Tweak – Removed methods for Tribe__Events__Aggregator__Service: has_service_message


Thanks for your continued support! We hope this update makes your sites much better, your jobs way easier, and your overall experience using our plugins a breeze. Cheers to you on behalf of everyone here at The Events Calendar!