LXXIV. MCAL functions

MCAL stands for Modular Calendar Access Library.

Libmcal is a C library for accessing calendars. It's written to be very modular, with plugable drivers. MCAL is the calendar equivalent of the IMAP module for mailboxes.

With mcal support, a calendar stream can be opened much like the mailbox stream with the IMAP support. Calendars can be local file stores, remote ICAP servers, or other formats that are supported by the mcal library.

Calendar events can be pulled up, queried, and stored. There is also support for calendar triggers (alarms) and reoccuring events.

With libmcal, central calendar servers can be accessed and used, removing the need for any specific database or local file programming.

To get these functions to work, you have to compile PHP with --with-mcal. That requires the mcal library to be installed. Grab the latest version from http://mcal.chek.com/ and compile and install it.

The following constants are defined when using the MCAL module: MCAL_SUNDAY, MCAL_MONDAY, MCAL_TUESDAY, MCAL_WEDNESDAY, MCAL_THURSDAY, MCAL_FRIDAY, MCAL_SATURDAY, MCAL_RECUR_NONE, MCAL_RECUR_DAILY, MCAL_RECUR_WEEKLY, MCAL_RECUR_MONTHLY_MDAY, MCAL_RECUR_MONTHLY_WDAY, MCAL_RECUR_YEARLY, MCAL_JANUARY, MCAL_FEBRUARY, MCAL_MARCH, MCAL_APRIL, MCAL_MAY, MCAL_JUNE, MCAL_JULY, MCAL_AUGUGT, MCAL_SEPTEMBER, MCAL_OCTOBER, MCAL_NOVEMBER, and MCAL_DECEMBER. Most of the functions use an internal event structure that is unique for each stream. This alleviates the need to pass around large objects between functions. There are convenience functions for setting, initializing, and retrieving the event structure values.

Tabla de contenidos
mcal_append_event -- Store a new event into an MCAL calendar
mcal_close -- Close an MCAL stream
mcal_create_calendar -- Create a new MCAL calendar
mcal_date_compare -- Compares two dates
mcal_date_valid -- Returns TRUE if the given year, month, day is a valid date
mcal_day_of_week -- Returns the day of the week of the given date
mcal_day_of_year -- Returns the day of the year of the given date
mcal_days_in_month -- Returns the number of days in the given month
mcal_delete_calendar -- Delete an MCAL calendar
mcal_delete_event -- Delete an event from an MCAL calendar
mcal_event_add_attribute -- Adds an attribute and a value to the streams global event structure
mcal_event_init -- Initializes a streams global event structure
mcal_event_set_alarm -- Sets the alarm of the streams global event structure
mcal_event_set_category -- Sets the category of the streams global event structure
mcal_event_set_class -- Sets the class of the streams global event structure
mcal_event_set_description -- Sets the description of the streams global event structure
mcal_event_set_end -- Sets the end date and time of the streams global event structure
mcal_event_set_recur_daily -- Sets the recurrence of the streams global event structure
mcal_event_set_recur_monthly_mday -- Sets the recurrence of the streams global event structure
mcal_event_set_recur_monthly_wday -- Sets the recurrence of the streams global event structure
mcal_event_set_recur_none -- Sets the recurrence of the streams global event structure
mcal_event_set_recur_weekly -- Sets the recurrence of the streams global event structure
mcal_event_set_recur_yearly -- Sets the recurrence of the streams global event structure
mcal_event_set_start -- Sets the start date and time of the streams global event structure
mcal_event_set_title -- Sets the title of the streams global event structure
mcal_expunge -- Deletes all events marked for being expunged
mcal_fetch_current_stream_event -- Returns an object containing the current streams event structure
mcal_fetch_event -- Fetches an event from the calendar stream
mcal_is_leap_year -- Returns if the given year is a leap year or not
mcal_list_alarms -- Return a list of events that has an alarm triggered at the given datetime
mcal_list_events -- Return a list of events between two given datetimes
mcal_next_recurrence -- Returns the next recurrence of the event
mcal_open -- Opens up an MCAL connection
mcal_popen -- Opens up a persistent MCAL connection
mcal_rename_calendar -- Rename an MCAL calendar
mcal_reopen -- Reopens an MCAL connection
mcal_snooze -- Turn off an alarm for an event
mcal_store_event -- Modify an existing event in an MCAL calendar
mcal_time_valid -- Returns TRUE if the given year, month, day is a valid time
mcal_week_of_year -- Returns the week number of the given date

add a note User Contributed Notes
MCAL functions

verdy_p at wanadoo dot fr
12-May-2002 11:55


Correction to previous extensive note:

ANDing distinct bit values will always result in zero, so your weekly events won't ever be raised. You must use the bitwise-or operator (|) to combine several week days.



mcal_event_set_recur_weekly takes an additional integer parameter

"weekdays" which is basicly a binary mask created by bitwise

ORing together integers representing the days of the week.



Sunday = 1

Monday = 2

Tuesday = 4

Wednesday = 8

Thursday = 16

Friday = 32

Saturday = 64



So if I wanted the value needed to raise the event every "Monday, Wednesday, and Friday" I would do this:

$weekdays = 2 | 8 | 32;

jeff at univrel dot pr dot uconn dot edu
03-Jul-2001 12:03


As of 7/3/2001, libmcal can be built shared (libmcal.so), which should get rid of the linking problem with the MySQL driver. Check the latest version out of the repository if you're planning on building it this way.

lurker at shadowtech dot org
23-Dec-2000 01:04


After a thorough search of the web for documentation of how recurence works in MCAL, or even for documentation of the recurence function parameters, I found nothing.  So, I gave up and dove into the MCAL source code for answers, and this is what I have found.  Please keep in mind that this is all "As far as I can tell" information.





First of all, I believe that mcal_list_events DOES return events that recur in the range being searched.





The mcal_event_set_recur_* functions take in an mcal stream, and date for the event to stop recuring by (given by day, month, year), and an "interval".





mcal_event_set_recur_weekly takes an additional integer parameter "weekdays" which is basicly a binary mask created by bitwise ANDing together integers representing the days of the week.





Sunday = 1


Monday = 2


Tuesday = 4


Wednesday = 8


Thursday = 16


Friday = 32


Saturday = 64





So if I wanted the value that represented  "Monday, Wednesday, and Friday" I would do this:


$weekdays = 2 & 8 & 32;





Here is how to interpret "interval" and "weekdays".





For mcal_event_set_recur_daily:


This event should recur every "interval" days.





For mcal_event_set_recur_weekly:


This event should recur on every day specified in "weekdays", and should do so every "interval" weeks.





For mcal_event_set_recur_monthly_mday: 


This event should recur on the "interval" day of every month.





For mcal_event_set_recur_monthly_wday:


This event should recur every on every Xday of the Yth week of the month, every "interval" months. (Where Xday is a day of the week, e.g. Monday, Tuesday, etc.  Note: This is the one I am the least sure about though it seems to be the logical assumption for how it should work based on the fact that there are two monthly functions and the other one's operation is intuitive.)





For mcal_event_set_recur_yearly:


This event should recur every "interval" years.

inan at canada dot com
25-Mar-2000 03:59


MCAL is a great little package, but has changed quite a bit since the documentation has been updated.  If you're having trouble stop by mcal.chek.com and pop a question onto the mcal users mailing list and we'll be happy to help you out.

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LXXIV. MCAL functions