Develop an Events Calendar

Project: Develop an Events Calendar
Putting into practice many of the concepts that have been introduced thus far, I’ll
conclude this chapter with instructions illustrating how to create a Web-based
events calendar. This calendar could store information regarding the latest cooking
shows, wine-tasting seminars, or whatever else you deem necessary for your
needs. This calendar will make use of many of the concepts you’ve learned thus
far and will introduce you to a few others that will be covered in further detail in
later chapters.
A simple file will store the information contained in the calendar. Here are the
file’s contents:
July 21, 2000|8 p.m.|Cooking With Rasmus|PHP creator Rasmus Lerdorf discusses the
wonders of cheese.
July 23, 2000|11 a.m.|Boxed Lunch|Valerie researches the latest ham sandwich
making techniques (documentary)
Expressions, Operators, and Control Structures
77
NOTE The use of continue in long and complex algorithms can result in
unclear and confusing code. I recommend avoiding use of this construct in
these cases.
July 31, 2000|2:30pm|Progressive Gourmet|Forget the Chardonnay; iced tea is the
sophisticated gourmet's beverage of choice.
August 1, 2000|7 p.m.|Coder's Critique|Famed Food Critic Brian rates NYC's hottest
new Internet cafés.
August 3, 2000|6 p.m.|Australian Algorithms|Matt studies the alligator's diet.
Our PHP script shown in Listing 3-1 will produce the output seen in Figure 3-1.
Before delving into the code, take a moment to read through the algorithm,
which will outline the series of commands executed by the code:
1. Open the file containing the event information.
2. Split each line into four elements: date, time, event title, and event summary.
3. Format and display the event information.
4. Close the file.
Chapter 3
78
Figure 3-1. The sample events calendar.
Listing 3-1: Script used to display contents of events.txt to browser
// application: events calendar
// purpose: read and parse data from a file and format it
// for output to a browser.
// open filehandle entitled '$events' to file 'events.txt'.
$events = fopen("events.txt", "r");
print "";
print "

"; print " Events Calendar: "; // while not the end of the file while (! feof($events)) : // read the next line of the events.txt file $event = fgets($events, 4096); // separate event information in the current // line into array elements. $event_info = explode("|", $event); // Format and output event information print "$event_info[0] ( $event_info[1] ) "; print "$event_info[2] "; print "$event_info[3] "; endwhile; // close the table print "

";
fclose ($events);
?>
This short example serves as further proof that PHP enables even novice
programmers to develop practical applications while investing a minimum of
time and learning. Don’t worry if you don’t understand some of the concepts introduced;
they are actually quite simple and will be covered in detail in later

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