Events Calendar – Custom search functionality with country

[Martin]

Hi,

I am interested in buying your products, but I couldn’t find from the documentation whether my requirement for search is covered. I need to build a custom search functionality (ideally located on start page), where a user can select multiple event categories (like with the autocomplete from filter bar add-on), a from and to date, and additionally a country where the event takes place.

The results should be displayed after hitting the search button on a result page, ideally as list view (not calendar view), and ideally with the possibility to apply additional filters (like with filter bar).

I read about tribe_get_events (https://theeventscalendar.com/function/tribe_get_events/), but can see only there from and to date, and things like organizer or venue – but no categories and no countries.

Is this somehow possible? Which product would I need?

[Josh]

Hey Martin,

Thanks for reaching out to us!

It sounds like you would need our Filter Bar plugin for the majority of that functionality. You can see a great working example of the features available there on our demo site here http://wpshindig.com/events/.

Just press “Show Filters” and you can see the plugin in action.

Let me know if this helps.

Thanks!

[Martin]

That’s not what I am looking for. Can you please re-read my post? I need to have a separate search on the start page (not on the events pages, there is some other content on the start page, I just need to have the mentioned search criteria). Then after hitting the search button there should appear a list view of results with respective filters. From that what I read, I don’t have the impression that it would be possible with filter bar, as it is always attached to the events page.

How can I achieve that with your products. Or would I have to use a different plugin like Toolset instead of events calendar?

[Josh]

Hey Martin,

I apologize for the confusion there.

The custom search “Start Page” isn’t something that is available within our plugin would possibly need to be something that is custom built.

For this, you could create a form based on your needs that did redirect to the calendar view and force certain filters active via the request. For an example, this link with the associated requests in the query string will activate the filters to show only Sunday events assigned to the “Meetings” category.

Let me know if this helps

Thanks!

[Martin]

Thanks, this seems to go into the right direction.

I have two more questions:
– is it possible to do a from date, to date query via this custom form and URL solution?
– is there any documentation for the URL parameters?

Thanks.

[Martin]

And one more question:
– Filter Bar seems to use AJAX to add categories to the URL, e.g. “tribe_eventcategory[]=12&tribe_eventcategory[]=8” – but how would that be done on the front page search? Ideally the same autocomplete you use in filter bar should be used (from Chosen, https://harvesthq.github.io/chosen/)? I think the search form can’t just post the form to “domain.com/events/”, as then the selected categories wouldn’t be pre-selected. Is there a solution to this?

[Josh]

Hey Martin,

Thanks for following up here.

Most of what you’re wanting to do could be accomplished with the plugin but would not be available out of the box. It would need a good bit of customization to accomplish which we aren’t able to support in our forums here. However the extensibility is there to do most of this with our plugin.

• For example, for the start and end date, you can do a custom “tribe_get_events” query to grab events from that range. You would however need to hook that up to a front-end control and view layer that isn’t currently provided via the plugins.
• I don’t believe we have full documentation on the parameters, however if you do use the plugin you can see them as well as how they’re added when they’re added to the Query String.
• Yes, the results are filtered using AJAX, however like the previous example link the filters are pre-selected when clicking that the same way they would be if you passed the information from a form to the events listing with the modified strings based on user input on your start page form.

Let me know if this helps.

Thanks!

 

 

[Martin]

Hi Josh,

Thanks for the clarification. Most important for me is the from-to-date search. As you mentioned it is possible to use the tribe_get_events to do such a query. But is it possible to combine tribe_get_events with the Filter Bar plugin? I understand from the documentation that tribe_get_events will be used on a custom page template. However, the filter bar plugin is used on the events page (domain.com/events) and the events page (e.g. list view) seems to run its own query. Can it be combined, and if so, how? Of course I would prefer to use tribe_get_events on the events page together with the filter bar plugin.

[Josh]

Hey Martin,

What you’re looking for isn’t directly available in our plugins. I did a little research and what you’re describing has been accomplished on a site that has a highly customized approach to the filters there https://www.medspeaks.com/events/.

So, it is possible however it will require some pretty detailed customization and isn’t something that we would be able to support in our forums here.

Let me know if this helps.

Thanks!

[Martin]

Hi Josh,

thanks for sharing the example. This example shows what I would like to achieve. However, I think it is really disappointing that Filter Bar doesn’t offer date filtering by default and that you don’t offer support to implement (e.g. via documentation). From a UI perspective this is really key (why should I force a user to browse through all months when he looks only for events in couple months time?).

Furthermore, the example you shared doesn’t use the calendar view at all, only the list view. This would be fine for me as well, but then – due to missing functionality and support from events calendar – I will need to take a look now into buying WP Toolset instead (https://wp-types.com) as this plugin offers the functionality of creating custom searches and views.

[Josh]

Hey Martin,

I appreciate your feedback here and would welcome this to be added on our UserVoice page.

I can somewhat understand your concern here “why should I force a user to browse through all months when he looks only for events in couple months time?” However for 99% of the time, having the events filtered by an “Event start date” like what is included in our main search bar would give users enough date filtering to find the events they’re looking for.

Thanks!

[Support Droid]

Hey there! This thread has been pretty quiet for the last three weeks, so we’re going to go ahead and close it to avoid confusion with other topics. If you’re still looking for help with this, please do open a new thread, reference this one and we’d be more than happy to continue the conversation over there.

Thanks so much!
The Events Calendar Support Team

[Author]

Posts