Never Ending Recurring Events

[dilyon]

Hi, I’m having an issue with the recurring events feature.

When I save the event with the recurrence that I need, it doesn’t load more than a months worth of events. Any idea as to how I can solve this problem?

Custom >> and will end Never >> on Every 1 Week >> M | T | W | Th | F

Also, on the same topic, I’m wondering if it is possible to achieve a recurring event without as many instances on the backend. Currently I get a duplicate event for each of the days selected of the week.

Is this normal? If I set the “Clean Up Recurring Events” to 5 days, for example, would the system only show 5 instances of the event and also solve my “Never Ending” setting issue by automatically creating new instances for the event every week?

[Barry]

Hi dilyon,

So two settings in particular are relevant here:

• Clean up recurring events after
• Create recurring events in advance for

Can you tell me what each of those are set to? If for instance the second of those is set to 1 month, that might explain what you are seeing.

I’m wondering if it is possible to achieve a recurring event without as many instances on the backend. Currently I get a duplicate event for each of the days selected of the week.

Our current recurrence model works by generating a post table entry for each instance of the recurring event.

I can see why that may not be ideal in a few cases and there are probably alternative models that could be explored – and even implemented as a customization (a “virtual event” that shows on all event views but doesn’t depend on lots of post objects being generated, for instance) – but it’s rather beyond the level of support we can offer here on the forums to guide you through that.

That said, we’re always open to new ideas and feature requests and if you’d like to post some suggestions you can do so on our UserVoice page: that way, other users can show their support for your idea by “up-voting” it 🙂

 

[dilyon]

The settings were as default, so 24 and 24. My issues is not so much the instances, but the resources it takes to generate all of the changes.

For example, when I create an event with NEVER as an end date, it never completes the creation. I get a white page with an error, reload the site and then see it created about a months worth of events. And if I have to make a change, it takes forever to update and never completes. I’ll have to reload to see the changes.

Would a solution be to set the values to a shorter timespan in the settings? Will the plugin automatically generate new events, of a never ending recurring event, if I set the value to 5 days for example. Would this eliminate the need to generate 512 instances of an event that happens 5 times per week and never ends?

[Barry]

For example, when I create an event with NEVER as an end date, it never completes the creation. I get a white page with an error, reload the site and then see it created about a months worth of events.

Ah, I see.

We’re aware of this problem and have plans to introduce some new facilities to better handle this and avoid timeouts – so that is in the works and will hopefully help with this once it rolls out.

Would a solution be to set the values to a shorter timespan in the settings? Will the plugin automatically generate new events, of a never ending recurring event, if I set the value to 5 days for example. Would this eliminate the need to generate 512 instances of an event that happens 5 times per week and never ends?

I’m not quite sure what you are picturing here, but it does sound like you’ve got a solid handle on the essence of the problem – which is the time and resources taken to generate such a large number of posts.

In short, if you can work around it by devising a scheme (such as week long events, thus requiring only 104 posts to be generated to cover every week for 2 years rather than 520, etc) and that scheme works well in the context of your project then yes – that would possibly be worth considering.

[dilyon]

Thanks for the prom response. The event only recurs Monday – Friday, would weekly work?

I meant, in the settings, where it is defaulted to 24 months, setting that to a shorter timespan.

My understanding from the documentation is that it automatically recreates and deletes events it maintain 24 moths with (or whatever timespan is set). If I reduce that number, will it in turn need to create less instances therefore reduce the amount of time it takes to generate.

I’m just not sure if the creation of future events is in fact automatic.

Thanks again for the help.

[Barry]

Yes, exactly right. If the window of time is set to create events 24months in the future, and you reduce this number, then far less events will be generated when you create a never ending event.

[Barry]

Hi! It’s been a while so I’m going to go ahead and close this thread. If we can help with anything else, though, please don’t hesitate to create new threads as needed. Thanks!

[Author]

Posts