Custom Irregular Recurring Dates/Times: Custom Fields?

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  • #29359
    Will
    Participant

    Hey there,
    I’ve seen all over the place the request to allow for more in-depth customization of recurring events, to account for irregular recurrence that doesn’t match a pattern. (You can add me to that list). I also see it might make the 2.1 release, but unfortunately the site I’m developing needs to prelaunch in a few weeks.

    For example: I have a series of dates attached to a single event:
    May 4, 10am-1pm
    May 11, 11am-1pm
    May 18, 10am-1pm

    I can ALMOST use the recurring feature, except for that pesky different time. And I know a lot of other folks are trying to create more irregular repetition than that.

    I saw in this post a suggestion from Brandon to set up custom fields:
    https://theeventscalendar.com/support/forums/topic/recurring-events-and-custom-event-attributes/

    He alludes to setting up custom event attributes using Custom Fields (in the Calendar Settings); the problem in that post is a different one from what I’m tackling, so I don’t want to muck up that thread.

    However, it made me wonder… are the dates and times managed by custom fields? I can’t enable custom fields in an Event edit page to see what’s going on, but if they are, I’m wondering if I can somehow create a reference to a specific recurring date and enter my own custom time in?

    1) Add an Advanced Custom Field control (I use advanced custom fields plugin by Elliot Condon) that allows a user to select a date&time (in case we have multiple events on a single date)
    2) Allow user to enter a new time range
    3) When returning a query of events, as each event is being created, check to see if the altered time field is populated for that event, and return a different time.

    What I don’t know is how to alter how the event appears in the calendar.

    Or, I just wait for the next version, and let my client know that for now they just need to enter in three different events. *shrug*

    #29364
    Barry
    Member

    However, it made me wonder… are the dates and times managed by custom fields?

    Yes, in a sense. It’s all held as post meta data and it’s not too complex a pattern if you take a peak at your database.

    The only problem I can see with your plan is that one of those post meta fields is expected to contain a serialized PHP array. I’m not sure that even ACF will handle that for you – but then again maybe it can (I’m not massively familiar with it) or maybe it can itself be extended to do so.

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