The purpose of this plugin is to add an event type similar to the normal post type. By design this plugin doesn’t provide any ready-made layouts, and allows the events to be fully integrated and customized to the theme of your choosing. Current Features Admin pages to view/create/modify events. Available data fields for events: start date, end date, venue, category....
The purpose of this plugin is to add an event type similar to the normal post type. By design this plugin doesn’t provide any ready-made layouts, and allows the events to be fully integrated and customized to the theme of your choosing.
Current Features
- Admin pages to view/create/modify events.
- Available data fields for events: start date, end date, venue, category
- Create weekly or biweekly recurring events
- Fully customizable widget for displaying upcoming events.
The custom post type created by the plugin is named ‘am_event’ and has two taxonomies: ‘am_event_categories’ and ‘am_venues’. Dates are stored as post metadata. Displaying the events is done in the theme files using WP_Query and the template tags provided by the plugin. This allows full control over the layout and what elements to show.
The widget for displaying upcoming events uses a simple template system for full control of the layout.
If you think something critical is missing, feel free to send me a request.
The plugin is available in the following languages (pot-file included for additional translations):
- English
- French
- Norwegian
- Finnish
TUTORIAL
For integrating AM Events to an existing theme, I suggest creating a child theme with custom page templates. You can find an example of a working Twenty Twelve child theme from https://github.com/attemoi/am-events-child-theme containing three different page templates for event pages.
Widget
Here are the shortcodes available in the upcoming events widget template.
- [event-title]
- [start-date]
- [end-date]
- [event-venue]
- [event-category]
- [content]
- [thumbnail]
- [excerpt]
- [permalink]
- [meta]
Conditional shortcodes:
- [if cond=”startdate-is-enddate”]
- [if cond=”startdate-not-enddate”]
- [if cond=”startday-is-endday”]
- [if cond=”startday-not-endday”]
- [if cond=”has-venue”]
- [if cond=”has-category”]
The title can be linked to the event post with the ‘link’ attribute, e.g. [event-title link=true]
The category and venue can also be linked similarly to their respective archive pages using the ‘link’ attribute, e.g. [event-category link=true]
The number of words displayed in the title, content or excerpt can be limited by the ‘limit’ attribute, e.g. [content limit=25] or [event-title limit=10].
The dates can be formatted using the ‘format’ attribute, e.g. [start-date format=’d.m.Y H:i’] (see PHP date for formatting options). If no format is given, the default WordPress date format is used.
You can use any shortcode as many times as needed in a single template. To separate date and time of start date for example you could write:
[start-date format='d.m.Y']
divider
[start-date format='H:i']
Example usage of conditional shortcode:
[start-date format='D d.m.Y H:s']
[if cond='startdate-not-enddate']
- [end-date format='D d.m.Y H:s']
[/if]
Template tags
Template tags were introduced in version 1.3.0 and are listed below. More documentation can be found in the source files.
// Template tags for getting and displaying event dates
am_the_startdate($format = 'Y-m-d H:i:s', $before = '', $after = '', $echo = true)
am_get_the_startdate( $format = 'Y-m-d H:i:s', $post = 0 )
am_the_enddate($format = 'Y-m-d H:i:s', $before = '', $after = '', $echo = true)
am_get_the_enddate( $format = 'Y-m-d H:i:s', $post = 0 )
// Template tags for getting and displaying event venues
am_get_the_venue( $id = false )
am_in_venue( $venue, $post = null )
am_get_the_venue_list( $separator = '', $parents='', $post_id = false )
am_the_venue( $separator = '', $parents='', $post_id = false )
// Template tags for getting and displaying event categories
am_get_the_event_category( $id = false )
am_get_the_event_category_list( $separator = '', $parents='', $post_id = false )
am_in_event_category( $eventCategory, $post = null )
am_the_event_category( $separator = '', $parents='', $post_id = false )
Example of displaying the first category of the current event post:
$categoryArray = am_get_the_event_category();
echo $categoryArray[0]->name;Creating a WP_Query
The custom post type is named ‘am_event’
The taxonomies are named ‘am_venues’ and ‘am_event_categories’.
The event post has metadata named ‘am_startdate’ and ‘am_enddate’ that are formatted like ‘yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm’
So suppose I wanted to display all events with a category of ‘other’ and venue ‘mcdonalds’. I would then make a WP_Query like this:
$args = array(
'post_type' => 'am_event',
'post_status' => 'publish',
'tax_query' => array(
'relation' => 'AND',
array(
'taxonomy' => 'am_venues',
'field' => 'name',
'terms' => 'mcdonalds',
),
array(
'taxonomy' => 'am_event_categories',
'field' => 'name',
'terms' => 'other'
),
),
);
$the_query = new WP_Query($args);
if ($the_query->have_posts()) {
while ($the_query->have_posts()) {
$the_query->the_post();
$postId = $post->ID;
// Use template tags to get start and end date
$startDate = am_get_the_startdate('Y-m-d H:i:s');
$endDate = am_get_the_enddate('Y-m-d H:i:s');
// Use template tags to get venues and categories in an array
$venues = am_get_the_venue( $postId );
$eventCategories = am_get_the_category( $postId );
// All the other functions used for posts like
// the_title() and the_content() work just like with normal posts.
// ... DISPLAY POST CONTENT HERE ... //
}
}
If you want the events ordered by start date, add the following to $args:
'orderby' => 'meta_value',
'meta_key' => 'am_startdate',
'order' => 'ASC',
If you need to display only upcoming events, add the following meta_query argument to $args:
'meta_query' => array(
array(
'key' => 'am_enddate',
'value' => date('Y-m-d H:i:s', time()),
'compare' => ">",
),
),
The plugin folder also contains a file “examples.php”, which contains an example function for displaying upcoming events in a table.
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