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URL Parameter Tutorial

This tutorial describes how to alter the view of your calendar using URL parameters. Your calendar may need to look and behave differently based on the viewer. The URL used by people that maintain the calendar may need to be different than the URL used by the general public. Using URL parameters, you can have links from your web site to different calendar views -- a year calendar, 10 day calendar, etc.

All calendar URLs begin with:
http://www.huntcal.com/cal/view/
followed by the group ID and the calendar ID. This tutorial will use the Mother Nature's Calendar, which is one of our sample calendars. The group ID of the Mother Nature's Calendar is mother. The calendar ID is nature. This calendar is set up to view events as a list rather than a wall calendar grid. The standard calendar URL for the Mother Nature's Calendar is:
http://www.huntcal.com/cal/view/mother/nature.
Note that the group ID and calendar ID are separated by a forward slash:  /


For the tutorial examples below, you may want to replace the group ID and calendar ID with your own to see how the URL alterations affect your calendar.

The URL parameters follow the calendar ID and begin with a question mark (?). Each parameter has a name and a value. Parameters are separated from one another by a semicolon (;).
Advanced Viewing

Advanced viewing offers several useful features including keyword search, event listing by date range or category. A different CGI program handles advanced viewing commands, which requires a different URL. For advanced viewing commands, replace view with aview in the URL. Most of the parameters listed above also apply to advanced view. However, only the m, d, and yr parameters are supported by view.

Advanced viewing allows the viewer to enter a beginning and ending date, a list of keywords, and select one or more categories. This input can be specified using URL parameters to provide useful views of the calendar events.
  • The vm=s parameter tells the calendar system to accept the input from the URL parameters and show the results. This parameter is required for all aview URL parameter settings. Without this setting, the parameters will set the input fields on the left side of the display, but will not produce a list of events.
  • The beginning date is specified using the m, d, and yr attributes. The default month is the current month. The default year is the current year. The default day is the current day.
    NamePossible values
    m1 - 12
    d1 - 31
    yr1998 - 2020
    The m, d, and yr attributes can also accept values using now, which represents the current month, day and year. Dates can also be specified using + and -. For example:
    m=now+1 represents next month and m=now-1 represents last month.
  • The ending date is specified using the m2, d2, and yr2 attributes. The default ending month is the current month. The default ending year is the current year. The default ending day is the last day of the month. m2, d2, and yr2 accept the same values as m, d, and yr.

    Examples:
  • The default advanced view output style is "list". This displays events in a vertical list. Use the avStyle parameter to change this to "grid" view. To do so, use this setting: "avStyle=g". For example: http://www.huntcal.com/cal/aview/mother/nature?vm=rs-L;avStyle=g
  • Keywords can be specified using the keywords attribute. The words should be separated by a plus sign +. For example:
    Show all events this year that include the words heavy and snow.
    ?m1=1;m2=12;keywords=heavy+snow;vm=rs
    (Note: The first part of the URL above isn't shown to ensure that the line doesn't wrap.)
  • The allWords attribute is used to specify that all of the search words must appear in the event description. Values for allWords can be yes or no. The default value is yes.
  • By default all search words must appear in the order they are entered. Use phrase=no to change this and specify that the order of the words in not important.
    For example:
    Show all events this year that contain either "hurricane" or "snow":
    ?m1=1;m2=12;keywords=hurricane+snow;allWords=n;phrase=no;vm=rs
    (Note: The first part of the URL above isn't shown to ensure that the line doesn't wrap.)
  • If you have a created categories, events can be listed by category using the cat parameter. Use the category IDs to specify which categories to include. Category IDs appear to the left of the category names on the Category Management page, which is accessible from the Calendar Admin page. Go here to view the Mother Nature Category Management page (Login: sample    Password: sample). The category IDs are typically numbers beginning with 1.
    Examples:
    For the Mother Nature calendar, we can list only "Weather" events for the year using this URL:
    http://www.huntcal.com/cal/aview/mother/nature?m=1;m2=12;cat=1;vm=rs
    (Note: the category ID for the "Weather" category is 1.)
    Show events that belong to either the "Human Disaster" or Spectacle" categories:
    http://www.huntcal.com/cal/aview/mother/nature?m=1;m2=12;cat=2,3;vm=rs
    (Note: a comma is used to separate the category IDs.)
  • Events can also be exported using the advanced view capabilities. Use the exp URL parameter to export events within a range of dates. The "vm=s" URL parameter must also be used with the exp parameter to retrieve events without form input. For example, this exports all 2010 events:
    http://www.huntcal.com/cal/aview/mother/nature?exp=1;vm=s;m=1;d=1;yr=2010;m2=12;d2=31;yr2=2010
  • The advanced view interface offers the ability to show the event title and the event description. By default, the event title is displayed if it exists. The event title is a link, which displays a small popup window that includes the event description. You can display both the title and the description using the "showDescr" parameter. For example:
    http://www.huntcal.com/cal/aview/mother/nature?vm=rs-L;showDescr=1
If you need a calendar view not supported by the parameters specified above, contact us.