A talk on how the Smart Date module can make your site faster, easier to create and manage events, and more intuitive for visitors

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SMART DATE
Date handling made simple(r)

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MARTIN
@mandclu
ANDERSON-CLUTZ

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SMART DATE

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HISTORY

5. UI COMPARISON
5

6. - “All Day” checkbox
- More natural output for date ranges
EDITOR EXPERIENCE
6

7. - Crawling a site about to launch, realized the slowest page was
an events archive
PERFORMANCE ISSUE
7

8. NEED FOR A MODULE
8
Editor UX
Performance
Formatting

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APPROACH

10. LEVERAGE CORE
10
- Extend core Date Range field
- Uses an HTML5 datetime picker
- Store data as timestamps
- Native db Datetime has advantages, but 100% custom
- Also not as portable
- Postgres uses timestamps to store dates
- Use existing class and methods
- JS uses timestamps for internal storage too

11. RECURRING DATES
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- Stores recurring instances as normal field deltas, so views will
work like normal multivalued fields
- Able to override specific instances
- Reschedule or cancel
- Special formatter for recurring dates
- Show a specific number of
upcoming and/or past instances
- Able to customize text display
or recurrence rule

12. CALENDAR INTEGRATION
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- Originally a patch on Fullcalendar Views
- Now a plugin instance
- Drag-and-drop support
- Full support for recurring dates
- Fullcalendar View actively maintained

13. STARTER KITS
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- Bundles of configuration to get you up and running quickly
- Install an Event content type and related views
- A great way to try out Smart Date, or jump start your project
- Easiest way to use Smart Date with Fullcalendar View
- Patches welcome!

14. DEMO TIME!
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- Editor
- Field config
- Output examples
- Display config
- Smart Date formats

15. MORE DEMOS!
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- Recurring Dates
- Formatter
- Calendar
- Starter Kit

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CHALLENGES

17. RESOLVED!
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- No interface in core to translate field config (output format)
- Created config entity type, also makes it reusable
- Views support, especially separate display of start and end
- Custom coded, even allows filtering by duration
- Tokens support
- Use an existing or custom format
- Timezones per event
- Works for core Datetime and Datetime Range fields

18. COMMUNITY ADOPTION
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- Blogs
- Newsletters
- Presentations (like this one!)
- Online discussions (Slack, etc)
- Support

19. COMMUNITY HELP
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- D7 migration
- D9 compatibility
- Misc fixes
- Drag-and-drop editing in calendar
- Views granularity?

20. THE PATH FORWARD
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- Views granularity
- Allowed start, end range per field
- Registration
- Smart(er) date elements in core

21. ADDRESSING THE PROBLEMS
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SPEED
Timestamps for
better
performance
FORMAT
Intelligent
formatting of
output,
translatable
EDITOR UX
JS-rich interface
provides app-like
functionality

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COMMENTS
QQUESTIONS

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THANKS!