RSS Export

Connect Daily allows exporting data in RSS 2.0 XML format. Using RSS export, you can get event data from your calendar and reformat it for display on your web site. For example, you want to have a list of today's events on the first page of your web site. Using the RSS module, you can fetch the calendar data as XML, reformat it, and display it on your web site. Doing this will require some knowledge of web programming topics. End users can also use news feed aggregation software to view your feed on their desktop.

Fetching RSS data from Connect Daily

The format of the RSS URL will be something like:

http://calendar.yourhost.name/[your path/]rss/[by method]/[id].xml

[your path] is the path to your calendar. If you are using a hosted calendar, then this part will be skipped.

[by method] is method you want to retrieve the entries by. Values would be:

calendar_id - Items for specific calendar
resource_type_id - Items for specific resource type
resource_id - Items for specific resource
item_type_id - Items for specific event type

[id].xml is the ID for the element you want to retrieve. The edit screen for the element (edit calendar, edit resource, etc) displays the ID you'll need to use.

Putting it all together, the URL to retrieve the Everything calendar from our demo site would be:

http://www.mhsoftware.com/caldemo/rss/calendar_id/34.xml

to retrieve the entries for the Pepsi Center, the URL would be:

http://www.mhsoftware.com/caldemo/rss/resource_id/3.xml

If you're doing Ajax or other programming you can request the URL:

http://www.mhsoftware.com/caldemo/rss/xxx/list.xml

where xxx is the element type, i.e., calendar_id, resource_id, resource_type_id, or item_type_id. List returns something like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<list type_id="32768">
<item>
<id>40</id>
<name>College Football</name>
</item>
<item>
<id>20</id>
<name>Colorado Avalanche</name>
</item>
...

</list>

Additional Parameters

To control the returned data, you can specify additional settings on your request.

Parameter Name	Values
pubdate	0 - The pubdate element of the item entry will be the last update of the event. The event start/stop date will be placed in the event description entry. If you specify pubdate=0, then the description will include the event start times for one time events, or the recurrence description for recurring events. 1 - Default. The pubdate element of the Item entry will be the event date time.
allow_duplicates	If this parameter is 1, then the RSS stream will come back with duplicate events. The default behavior is to return each event only one time in the feed regardless of how many times it occurs during the period the feed is returning.
start	Julian start date for events. If this value is present, then events from the start date forward are returned.
maxcount	Number. Maximum count of Item entries to return.
dayspan	Number of days of events to return. By default, the RSS export will return the number of days specified in the System configuration screen. Using this parameter, you can increase or decrease the number of days that events are returned for. If this parameter is -1, then all one time or specific dates events in the candidate set (calendar, resource, etc) will be returned. This includes events that are in the past. Recurring events (other than specific dates) will not be included in the output set. This parameter is ignored if newest is specified. Regardless of how many times an event occurs during the specified period, the entry will only be returned one time.
newest	1 - If this value is specified, rather than returning the next dayspan days of events, the maxcount newest events will be returned. In other words, the maxcount most recently edited events will be returned.
reverse	1 - Reverse events from the natural order.
rollup	0 - Don't roll up events from included calendars into this export. 1 - Default. Follow the option set at the calendar level for rollup.
show_resources	0 - Do not add resource names to event title. 1 - Add resource names to event title. The default behavior if this argument is not specified is to follow the user's preference for Show Resources by Default.
username password	If you want to use the feed from another program, and the feed requires a login to be visible, you can pass the user name and password as arguments. See the example below.

Examples

Retrieve the last 5 concerts added to the concert calendar.

http://www.mhsoftware.com/caldemo/rss/calendar_id/7.xml?newest=1&maxcount=5

Retrieve concerts for the next two weeks, up to a maximum of 12 concerts, omitting holidays rolled into the calendar.

http://www.mhsoftware.com/caldemo/rss/calendar_id/7.xml?dayspan=14&maxcount=12&rollup=0

Retrieve the concert calendar using the user name and password of demo/demo.

http://www.mhsoftware.com/caldemo/rss/calendar_id/7.xml?username=demo&password=demo

Custom Name Space

In addition to the standard RSS 2.0 elements, Connect Daily includes additional data elements for each event. The additional Items include event end time, contact name, last modified date, etc. For a complete list of additional fields and their meaning, refer to the URL below.

http://www.mhsoftware.com/cdailyModule.htm