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Event Calendar
Posted Date: 07 May 2008 Resource Type: Articles Category: .NET Framework
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Posted By: Neeraj Saluja Member Level: Gold
Rating:  Points: 40
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Introduction
Tracking anything in dates is one of the common requirement now a days. Tracking events, project milestones, tracking history, tracking schedule etc etc. It was quite a complex job until the wonderful Calendar Control of ASP.NET 2.0. It is one of the Standard Server Side Web Control of ASP.NET 2.0, which when used properly can help in accomplishing the varoius requirements, tracking being one of them. Here we are going to see how can this Calendar control can help us in tracking the events.
Event Calendar
One of best ways in which events can be displayed is by displaying the events by month. What it basically means is - display the complete month and display the events against each date.
How can this be achieved
It is quite simple and straight forward. ASP.NET Calendar control posses an event "DayRender" which has got "DayRenderEventArgs" as one of the parameters. This DayRenderEventArgs has got two very useful things - Day and Cell. Day is of the type "CalendarDay" and Cell is f the type "TableCell". Day can help us in identifying the day, date etc which it is going to render and Cell gives us handle to the table cell corresponding to that day. Now since we have handle to Table Cell of displaying Date, we can play with it to cater to our needs. For event Calendar we are simply going to use this event to add the event details in the Table Cells associated with the dates.
CalendarDay d = ((DayRenderEventArgs)e).Day;
TableCell c = ((DayRenderEventArgs)e).Cell;
if ( !d.IsOtherMonth )
c.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl( dr["EventDetails"].ToString() ) );
And thats it, we are done.
Event Calendar Control
If we are aware that we are going to use the same functionality again and again, it is better to make it a re-usable component. So here, we are going to extend the capabilities of basic ASP.NET 2.0 Calendar control. The basic requirement of data driven applications is that source of information basically is data store. It can be database, XML File, Excel or anything for that matter. Here we are going to limit our scope and going to implement the EventCalendar with ADO.NET DataTable as the source of data. Let us see the ingredients of this calendar control
1. A class which extends System.Web.UI.WebControls.Calendar
2. The necessary properties :
EventSource : DataTable with Event Details,
EventStartDateColumnName : ColumnName of the Column of the type DateTime in the EventSource, which stores the Start Date associated with Events
EventEndDateColumnName : ColumnName of the Column of the type DateTime in the EventSource, which stores the End Date associated with Events
EventHeaderColumnName : ColumnName of the Column of the type String in the EventSource, which stores the Event Header,
EventDescriptionColumnName: ColumnName of the Column of the type String in the EventSource, which stores the Event Detailed Description,
ShowDescriptionAsToolTip : Boolean to determine whether to display Event Description as Tool Tip or not.
EventForeColor: ColumnName of the Column to specify the Fore ( Font ) Color for the event. We can specify any Color Name which belongs to System.Drawing.Color namespace.
EventBackColor: ColumnName of the Column to specify the Back Color for the event.We can specify any Color Name which belongs to System.Drawing.Color namespace.
3. EventCalendarDayRender Event : Place where the actual logic to show the events in Calendar is implemented
This describes the skeleton for your EventCalendar Class. Refer to the EventCalendar.cs class in the attached demo for complete implementation. By extending the control in such way we can keep the basic features provided along with the new features/capabilities that we need to cater to our requirements.
Wrapping Up
ASP.NET Controls are undergoing development and continuous evolution with each release, ASP.NET 2.0 Controls are no exception. These controls not only getting smarter and smarter, but also giving a developer better handle to its basic buidling blocks like TableCell of Calendar Control.
Please spare some time to rate and provide feedback about this article. Your couple of minutes can help in enhancing the quality of this article.
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Responses
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| Author: Sebastian 13 Jun 2008 | Member Level: Gold Points : 1 | This is very informative. Thanks for sharing the details.
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