PloneFormGen (Plone) & Google Calendar Integration

// under calendar form gen google mash pfg plone product python script

It’s a little bit of a different mash-up, but it’s still nonetheless useful to have, given types of booking forms and so forth that could utilise it. The easiest way I found (to avoid security issues with Python scripts in Plone) was to create an external method and just import it within a PFG Custom Adapter.

Parts

My GoogleCalendar.py external method. I’ve had to add this into a policy product I have. The function should be generalised enough to work with any Google account, hosted or not. In short:
- It takes in a variety of arguments (email, password, calendar_url, start_time, end_time, title, location, content).
  - Email/password are your auth details
  - calendar_url is where you’re putting the event,
  - and the rest of the args are related to the event itself.
- It builds the XML-based request to create the event. I tried going for the gdata API, but it’s just over the top for a simple exercise like this.
- Send the request to Google (twice, as required), and create the event in the process.

A custom PFG script adapter like this:

from DateTime import DateTime
from my.theme.Extensions.GoogleCalendar import createGoogleCalendarEvent
calendar_url = 'http://www.google.com/...'
email = '<span class="mh-email">myu<a href="http://www.google.com/recaptcha/mailhide/d?k=01y8BLyDqFl2lR8hms6kYeaw==&c=WDOrJledyL7Tzo9unwfHPwgE0TrIw31nHDxcUFu_QIY=" onclick="window.open('http://www.google.com/recaptcha/mailhide/d?k=01y8BLyDqFl2lR8hms6kYeaw==&c=WDOrJledyL7Tzo9unwfHPwgE0TrIw31nHDxcUFu_QIY=', '', 'toolbar=0,scrollbars=0,location=0,statusbar=0,menubar=0,resizable=0,width=500,height=300'); return false;" title="Reveal this e-mail address">...</a>@google.com</span>'
password = 'shhhhhsecret'
startDateTime = (DateTime(str(fields['start-date-time']))).HTML4()
endDateTime = (DateTime(str(fields['end-date-time']))).HTML4()
eventTitle = str(fields['purpose'])
eventLocation = str(fields['rooms-to-book'])
eventContent = 'Booked for:  '+ str(fields['booking-name'])
createGoogleCalendarEvent(context, email, password, calendar_url, startDateTime, endDateTime, eventTitle, eventLocation, eventContent)

And that should be that. As long as all your URLs, emails, passwords, and fields in your form are suitable, this should work a treat. Note that the start-date-time and end-date-time fields are date/time fields in your Form Folder and converting to HTML4() makes them into Google’s format. Additional info can be added in the eventContent variable, and that’ll turn up in the Description in Google Calendar.

For added spice…

Just add a web interface to your Google Calendar to your Plone site (eg in a normal Plone page; watch out for iframe filtering) and let people book themselves into things. Would be great to see PFG know when a Google Calendar event was on (and stop people submitting) but it’s a bit much just for now.

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