Gossamer Forum: Products: DBMan: Customization: Listing the next event in an IFRAME (Code included)

I wanted to be able to load the next event from my event database in an IFRAME on my main page. Here is the code to do it if anyone's interested.

Hope this is of help to someone. See www.bandsman.co.uk to see it in action.

Change view_records in db.cgi:

Code:
sub view_records { 
# -------------------------------------------------------- 
# This is called when a user is searching the database for  
# viewing. All the work is done in query() and the routines just 
# checks to see if the search was successful or not and returns 
# the user to the appropriate page. 

	# NJH (njh@bandsman.co.uk) 
	if($in{'listnext'}) { 
		# Suitable for use in an IFRAME 

		if (!$html_headers_printed) { 
			print "Content-type: text/html\n\n"; 
			$html_headers_printed = 1; 
		} 

		my @match; 

		my $today = &date_to_unix(&get_date(time())); 
		my $matchdate = 0; 

		open (DB, "<$db_file_name") or &cgierr("error in search. unable to open database: $db_file_name.\nReason: $!"); 
		if ($db_use_flock) { flock(DB, 1); }	 
		LINE: while (<DB>) { 
			(/^#/)      and next LINE;		# Skip comment Lines. 
			(/^\s*$/)   and next LINE;		# Skip blank lines. 
			my $line = $_;	chomp ($line);		# Remove trailing new line. 
			my @values = &split_decode($line); 

			# Ignore any before today, 12 is my date field 
			my $thisdate = &date_to_unix($values[12]); 

			($thisdate > $today) or next LINE; 

			# TODO: time as well as date 
			if(($matchdate == 0) || ($thisdate < $matchdate)) { 
				@match = @values; 
				$matchdate = $thisdate; 
			} 

			($thisdate == $today) and last LINE; 
		} 

		close DB; 

		if($matchdate > 0) { 
			print "<HTML>"; 
			print "<BODY BGCOLOR=\"#FFFFFF\">"; 
			print "<FONT SIZE=\"2\"><I>Next event:<BR>"; 
			# Print date, desc and URL 
			print "$match[12]: $match[2]<BR>"; 

			print "<A HREF=\""; 

			if ($match[9] ne "") { 
				my $url = $match[9]; 

				$url =~ s/^http:\/\///; 

				print "../bbl2.cgi?redir=$url&address="; 
				print "$match[11]\" target=\"_top\">$match[1]"; 
			} else { 
				print "mailto:$match[11]\" target=\"_top\">$match[1]"; 
			} 
			print "</A></FONT></I></BODY></HTML>\n"; 
		} 
	} else { 
		my ($status, @hits) = &query("view"); 
		if ($status eq "ok") { 
			&html_view_success(@hits); 
		} 
		else { 
			&html_view_failure($status); 
		} 
	} 
}

You then need to mark up the page it's to be included in (in my case my index.htm)

Code:
<P ALIGN="center"><FONT SIZE="2"> 
<IFRAME src="cgi-bin/events/db.cgi?uid=default&db=events&listnext=1&view_records=1" ALIGN="center" scrolling="no" frameborder="no"></IFRAME> 
</P>

--
Nigel Horne. Arranger, Composer, Conductor, Typesetter.

I've fixed a few bugs:

1) Events on today did not appear
2) The character set and language were not set
3) The last-modified HTTP attribute was not set.

To fix you will need to add this to the top of db.cgi:

Code:
use Time::Local;	# NJH

Then modify view_records thus:

Code:
sub view_records { 
# -------------------------------------------------------- 
# This is called when a user is searching the database for  
# viewing. All the work is done in query() and the routines just 
# checks to see if the search was successful or not and returns 
# the user to the appropriate page. 

	# NJH 
	if($in{'listnext'}) { 
		# Suitable for use in an IFRAME 

		my @match; 

		my $mostrecent = 0; 
		my @mostrecentdate; 
		my $today = &date_to_unix(&get_date(time())); 
		my $matchdate = 0; 

		open (DB, "<$db_file_name") or &cgierr("error in search. unable to open database: $db_file_name.\nReason: $!"); 
		if ($db_use_flock) { flock(DB, 1); }	 
		LINE: while (<DB>) { 
			(/^#/)      and next LINE;		# Skip comment Lines. 
			(/^\s*$/)   and next LINE;		# Skip blank lines. 
			my $line = $_;	chomp ($line);		# Remove trailing new line. 
			my @values = &split_decode($line); 

			# Ignore any before today, 12 is my date field 
			my $thisdate = &date_to_unix($values[12]); 

			if($thisdate >= $today) { 
				# TODO: time as well as date 
				if(($matchdate == 0) || ($thisdate < $matchdate)) { 
					@match = @values; 
					$matchdate = $thisdate; 

					# TODO: if there's more than one on 
					# the same day pick one in random 
					last LINE if($thisdate == $today); 
				} 
			} else { 
				if(($mostrecent == 0) || ($thisdate > $mostrecent)) { 
					$mostrecent = $thisdate; 
					@mostrecentdate = @values; 
				} 
			} 
		} 

		close DB; 

		if($matchdate > 0) { 
			if (!$html_headers_printed) { 
				# print Last-Modified based on the most recent 
				# entry 
				print "Content-type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1\n"; 

				if($mostrecent > 0) { 
					my ($dd, $mmm, $yy) = ($mostrecentdate[12] =~ /(\d+)-([A-Z][a-z][a-z])-(\d+)/); 
					my %months = ( 
						"Jan" => 0, 
						"Feb" => 1, 
						"Mar" => 2, 
						"Apr" => 3, 
						"May" => 4, 
						"Jun" => 5, 
						"Jul" => 6, 
						"Aug" => 7, 
						"Sep" => 8, 
						"Oct" => 9, 
						"Nov" => 10, 
						"Dec" => 11); 

					my $mm = $mostrecentdate[6];	# mins 
					my $hh = $mostrecentdate[7];	# hours 

					$mostrecent = timelocal(0, $mm, $hh, $dd, $months{$mmm}, $yy - 1900); 
					my $mtime = localtime $mostrecent; 
					print "Last-Modified: $mtime\n"; 
				} 
				print "\n"; 
				$html_headers_printed = 1; 
				if ($ENV{'REQUEST_METHOD'} eq 'HEAD') { 
					return; 
				} 
			} 

			# Print date, desc and URL 
			print "<HTML LANG=\"en-GB\"><BODY BGCOLOR=\"#FFFFFF\">"; 
			print "<FONT SIZE=\"2\"><I>"; 
			print "<A HREF=\"$db_script_link_url&view_records=1&ID=$match[0]\" target=\"_top\">"; 
			print "$match[12]</A>: $match[2]<BR>"; 

			print "<A HREF="; 

			if ($match[9] ne "") { 
				my $url = $match[9]; 

				$url =~ s/^http:\/\///; 

				print "\"../bbl2.cgi?redir=$url&address="; 
				print "$match[11]\" target=\"_top\""; 
			} else { 
				print "\"mailto:$match[11]\""; 
			} 
			print ">$match[1]</A></FONT></I></BODY></HTML>\n"; 
		} 
	} else { 
		my ($status, @hits) = &query("view"); 
		if ($status eq "ok") { 
			&html_view_success(@hits); 
		} 
		else { 
			&html_view_failure($status); 
		} 
	} 
}

--
Nigel Horne. Arranger, Composer, Conductor, Typesetter.