Calendar Format

The appearance of your LiveWhale Calendar (or calendar widget in the LiveWhale CMS) is controlled by a number of widget settings and templates from your theme.

• The “outside” of your calendar (header, footer) and calendar settings (which groups/types/tags to include/exclude and other calendar widget settings) are covered in Calendar Basics.
• The “inside” of your calendar (the day/week/month/event views or individual UI elements) is customizable as Calendar Components.
• You can customize your calendar appearance using Calendar Styling.
• More advanced customization can be done using Custom JavaScript.

Calendar Basics

Your LiveWhale Calendar homepage likely starts off by including a main_template.html file:

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<widget type="file">
    <arg id="path">/_i/includes/calendar/main_template.html</arg>
    <arg id="no_format">true</arg>
</widget>

Editing this file (_i is short for _ingredients) you can start organizing and theming your calendar. main_template.html typically includes:

• Your site header (which you could move into an include and name calendar_header.html)
• Widget arguments for your calendar (included from calendar_settings.html)
• the HTML that lays out your calendar’s elements
• Your site footer (which you could move into an include and name calendar_footer.html)

(Older installations might instead include a calendar_head.html and calendar_template.html from the core theme directly into index.php, but all the same rules of Theme Inheritance still apply.)

In this main_template file (or any file includes you add), you can add/remove and rearrange the main calendar elements. You’ll need <xphp var="lw_calendar_view_menu"/> to display the day/week/month/all view selector, as well as <xphp var="lw_calendar"/> for the body of the calendar.

Beyond that, you can choose from the following sidebar elements, and customize them further with their individual components (below).

In general, the above filters will show all starred, global options (e.g. starred global tags, starred event types, etc.) on the front-end displays. Learn more about customizing those filters.

Customizing settings on a per-group basis

You may want to exclude a certain tag or event type from one group’s calendar, for instance. You can do this by creating a custom calendar_settings.html in the group that matches your theme name.

For example, in the “music” group, /_ingredients/themes/global/includes/calendar_settings.html will be overridden by /_ingredients/themes/music/includes/calendar_settings.html.

You can also add XPHP logic to the global calendar_settings.html include instead. More info and examples.

Calendar Components

While the above includes manage the things around your calendar, you’ll edit your calendar’s components to tweak the appearance and functionality of individual pieces of the calendar, like the event view, day view, date selector, and more.

If you copy/edit any of the following to /_ingredients/themes/global/components/calendar/, they will override the defaults from the core theme. (For some clients, we’ve copied them already to /_ingredients/themes/global/components/move_to_calendar_to_customize/ as a courtesy.)

(Note for existing clients: You may be on a legacy setup where the below components are combined into calendar.html and calendar_components.html files. Contact Support to discuss moving to this new setup in your next upgrade.)

View Components

Optional View Components

Note: Your calendar installation might not support or have styling for the above optional views. Contact Support if you’re interested in enabling the home, featured, or feed_builder views.

UI Components

Using variables in calendar components

When editing the above components, you can start off by rearranging the options provided in the core component. You’ll see variables being added in double-curly brackets:

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{{ title_link }}

As well as some simple JavaScript logic using curly-and-square brackets, where variables are prefixed with obj.:

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{[ if (obj.is_repeating) { ]}
	Repeats {{ repeats }} {{ until }}
{[ } ]}

Note: In LiveWhale 2.0+, variables inside of {[ ]} must be prefixed with obj. in order to be included in your event results. This is due to performance optimizations that provide the event list and event details views with only the variables you are using in your component. See below for a list of the available variables in those components.

Variables for Event List and Details Components

These are the variables available when customizing the Event List (lw_cal_event.html) and Event Details (lw_cal_event_detail.html) components.

Event Basics

Date and Time

Date and Time (Advanced)

Image

When using {{ image }} in your Event Details component, the image or slideshow that’s provided (depending on if the event has one or multiple images attached) is provided by the default gallery in LiveWhale 2.0+.

You can fully customize the default gallery to change the way that {{ image }} appears, or you can override certain settings just for the calendar in your calendar widget settings.

Location

Online Events

Tags

Categories / Event Types

If you’d like to format the event types using your own markup, you can use code like this to loop over the array:

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{[ _.each(obj.categories, function(category) { ]}
    <span class="event_type">{{ category }}</strong>
{[ }); ]}

You can also link to more events of that type by linking to /all/categories/Category Name. Note, you’ll need to include class="lw_cal_app_link" anytime you create a link tag from inside of another event component that’s meant to refresh the main calendar view.

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{[ _.each(obj.categories, function(category) { ]}
    <a href="/all/categories/{{ category }}" class="lw_cal_app_link">{{ category }}</a>
{[ }); ]}

Calendar Styling

Your calendar page will render and load /_ingredients/themes/global/styles/calendar.less on every view by default.

If you have a different or additional theme set (say, a custom “music” theme for the “music” group), it will also load the associated /_ingredients/themes/music/styles/calendar.less, if one exists.

You’ll notice your calendar.less begins with something like this:

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/* Import core calendar styles */
@import "../../../../livewhale/theme/core/styles/calendar.less";

 /* Import core calendar mobile mixins */
@import "../../../../livewhale/theme/core/styles/calendar-mobile.less";

This is very important— including these styles and mobile mixins allow you to build on top of the existing core calendar styles from LiveWhale, rather than starting from scratch. It also means that the next time you are upgraded, any changes to the core theme/UI will filter down into your theme with minimal work.

There are also a few default variables you’ll inherit from the core theme, but can override in your own calendar.less should you choose:

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@highlight1:  #c00; // Primary color
@highlight2:  #900; // Secondary color
@white:       #fff;
@dark-gray:   #333;
@mid-gray:    #2a3132;
@light-gray:  #eee;
@accentfont:  inherit;

At minimum, we recommend setting your school color(s) to the @higlight1 and @highlight2 variables in /_ingredients/themes/global/styles/calendar.less. You may want to do more hands-on styling of individual elements, but this will do a first-pass at matching the various UI elements to your chosen colors.

Using mobile mixins

The calendar-mobile.less include doesn’t generate any rendered CSS, but rather provides a few mixins that you can choose to include in your own style, to allow for custom mobile breakpoints and styling.

Example usage:

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 /* Import core calendar mobile mixins */
@import "../../../../livewhale/theme/core/styles/calendar-mobile.less";

// Set the mobile breakpoint
@media only screen and (max-width: 767px) {
	.mobileViewSelector(); // use the mobile view selector
	.mobileMonthViewGrid(); // use a grid of dots for month view
	.mobilePaymentsTable(); // use the mobile RSVP form
}

Custom JavaScript

If you create a /_ingredients/themes/global/scripts/calendar-custom.js, it will be loaded in every view of your front-end calendar. This can be used to implement additional JavaScript or jQuery customization on top of the default calendar behavior.

The below template for calendar-custom.js aliases the livewhale.jQuery object for you to use as $. Note also, there are several JavaScript triggers you can bind to, in order to run custom code at particular times or for particular views.

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(function($, LW) {

	// Events:
	// calBeforeInit.lwcal   - fires after exported symbols exposed and before controller initialization
	// calInit.lwcal         - fires after first view data loads
	// calBeforeChange.lwcal - fires before loading new view data
	// calChange.lwcal       - fires after loading new view data
	// calLoad.lwcal         - fires after each view finishes loading
  
	$('body').bind('calBeforeInit.lwcal', function() {
		// do something before the calendar loads
	});

	$('body').bind('calInit.lwcal', function() {
		var lwcal = LW.lwCalendar;
		var controller = lwcal.controller;
		// do something after first data loads
	});

	$('body').bind('calLoad.lwcal', function(e, controller, data) {
		var view = controller.getView();
		if ('day' === view) {
			// do something on day view
		}
		if ('week' === view) {
			// do something else on week view
		}
		if ('event' === view) {
			// do something else on event view
		}
	});

}(livewhale.jQuery, livewhale));

Group Calendars

When you create a new group in LiveWhale Calendar, you have the option to give it a URL. Visitors to that URL will see the “group calendar,” which uses a special template group_calendar.php. In most cases, your group_calendar.php is probably the same as your main /index.php — that is, individual group calendars look like your calendar homepage.

In LiveWhale 1.7.1 and before, the group calendar template was located at

• /_ingredients/themes/global/components/group_calendar.php

In LiveWhale 2.0+, the new supported locations for the group calendar template are

• /_ingredients/templates/group_calendar.php
• /_ingredients/templates/resources/group_calendar.php
• /_ingredients/themes/global/components/group_calendar.php (for backwards compatibility)

And if no group_calendar.php is found, LiveWhale 2.0+ will fall back to your calendar homepage /index.php.

Event Type and Tag Settings

By default, LiveWhale will display all your calendar event types and tags as front-end filters, using the following theme tags:

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<xphp var="lw_calendar_categories"/>
<xphp var="lw_calendar_categories_audience"/>
<xphp var="lw_calendar_categories_campus"/>
<xphp var="lw_calendar_tags"/>

Event types will only show up after they’ve been applied to events (same with starred tags)—so, if your Athletics calendar doesn’t have any “Performance” events, that event type won’t show up in the filter list on the Athletics calendar.

However, there may be times when you want to control the front-end display of event types and tags more granularly. Since LiveWhale 1.7, you can do so by adding the following settings in /livewhale/client/public.config.php:

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$_LW->CONFIG['CALENDAR_GROUP_CATEGORIES_TYPE']=[];
$_LW->CONFIG['CALENDAR_GROUP_CATEGORIES_AUDIENCE']=[];
$_LW->CONFIG['CALENDAR_GROUP_CATEGORIES_CAMPUS']=[];
$_LW->CONFIG['CALENDAR_GROUP_TAGS']=[];

Each of those arrays takes the same format: first, the group ID, then a sub-array of all event types allowed to be displayed in that group. For example:

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$_LW->CONFIG['CALENDAR_GROUP_CATEGORIES_TYPE']=[
	123 => ['Athletics', 'Exhibitions', 'Performances', 'Lectures'],
	456 => ['Athletics', 'Performances', 'Lectures'],
	789 => ['Exhibitions', 'Performances', 'Lectures']
];

These act as filters on top of the default behavior: so, in the example settings above, group 123 will still only show “Athletics” in the filter list if there are events with that type in the group. However, group 789 will not show the filter “Athletics,” even if there are Athletics events in the group.