Google Calendar link generates invalid URL

[gwf]

Hi Modern Tribe Peeps.

There is a fair few topics relating to Google Calendar and none of them have resolutions. All pointing to ‘have you tried without plugins’ or ‘reinstall on a site with the default wp theme and no plugins’ etc etc.

We have a site wildmob.org and on that site there are events for every program. The +Google Cal link generates a URL that is 2440 characters long, when this is put into the browser the error is generated. This has nothing to do with other plugins or the theme that we are running as I have replicated the behavior on a vanilla install in a local dev environment.

The maximum URL length I thought was to be less than 2000 chars? Is this a fault with the plugin?

Thanks Michael D.

[Geoff]

Hey there, Michael! Thanks for getting in touch and sorry for the trouble here.

I definitely see what you mean–I do indeed get the “Invalid Request” error when trying to click the Google Calendar links on your site.

The interesting thing is that I’ve compared a (working) Google Calendar URL from my local setup to your (non-working) URL and they’re quite strikingly different. I’ve created this Gist so you can compare them as well.

Do you notice how your URL is injecting a lot of class names and other variables where the content description is? It seems as though the tabs in your content description are somehow getting rendered in there and that makes me wonder if this is what’s causing the conflict.

I know you have noted trying a vanilla install on a local dev environment with the same results but–if it’s possible–would you be able to set up a new site in a subdirectory of your server so we can test there together? I think this will give us the best clean slate to with and troubleshoot together.

• Please install a fresh copy of WordPress in a subdirectory (if you have cPanel hosting account there will probably be a one-click install to make this really easy)
• Don’t install anything except The Events Calendar and Events Calendar PRO
• Please also stick to a default theme–again, there’s no need to install anything else just yet!
• Create a few events so we have some test data to work with
• Are the Google Calendar URLs still pointing to something invalid?

At this point, please stop and let me know what you find before going any further and send me a link so I can look as well. 🙂

Thanks!
Geoff

[gwf]

Hey Geoff

Thanks for the reply. We have discovered 2 separate issues while going through your steps (installing a clean install on the same server using the same WP & PHP versions).

Problem 1 – “Visual Composer by Salient”
This was included in our server environment as a MU plugin. When replicated locally, this was also replicated. This plugin that is included with the theme Salient by ThemeNectar seems to be the source of the php/html code injection into the ‘description’

Problem 2 – http link does not work, httpS does!
Take the same event, that we have not changed, on the same original server, as in the original ticket (link for eg: http://wildmob.org/event/island-arks-symposium-iv-norfolk-island/ ) and then go down to the Google Cal link, COPY URL and then past the URL in the browser, changing the http to https. The request redirects successfully to Google Calendar create event. Still with all the crap code that was injected, but it does work like it should.

We have contacted the theme developers about Problem 1.

Can you let me know if Problem 2 is related to the events calendar plugin or something to do with Problem 1.

Cheers Michael D.

[Geoff]

Nice work, man!

I have to say I’m unfamiliar with Visual Composer. In looking at it, I don’t see that it has SSL or other server implications, but I wonder if it does and I’m just missing that. Perhaps the theme developer can shed more light on that for us as well.

When working with a clean install–including any themes and MU plugins–do you notice that the Google URL redirects correctly? If so, then that would certainly suggest that there is theme conflict.

Cheers!
Geoff

[Geoff]

Hey there, Michael! This thread’s been quiet for a couple of weeks, so I’m going to go ahead and close it. I hope the theme author was able to provide some more direction here, but do please let us know if any other questions pop up that we can help with. 🙂

Cheers!
Geoff

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