CGI Program: Sundial Event Retrieval Script


Introduction

Sundial is a comprehensive & scalable calendaring system providing distributed authorship, information approval workflows, mass-personalization, development interfaces, registration management, and e-commerce within a mature security model.

At Columbia, Sundial powers the University Events Calendar as well as many other school, departmental, and group calendars.

Using Sundial's event retrieval interface, one is able to leverage Sundial's repository of events and generate a calendar specific to one's needs and interests.

Introduction to Sundial's Event Retrieval Interface

Sundial offers a simple HTTP-based interface for the retrieval of event information. One may obtain information from Sundial by forming a request to the event retrieval interface. Using Sundial's event retrieval interface one can specify what events are to be retreived and how they are to be presented.

Note that variables passed to the event retrieval interface are specified as name/value pairs of the form:

name=value

and the pairings are separated by ampersands, &. No variables are required. Variable names are case-sensitive.

For more information about Sundial's event retrieval interface, please see the section "Event Retrieval Interface" of Sundial's documentation at the following URL:

http://calendar.columbia.edu/sundial/docs/

How to Use Sundial's Event Retrieval Interface in Columbia University Hosted Web Sites

On Columbia's web servers, one calls upon a cgi-script installed at the following URL:

http://www.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/sundial/get

This "get" cgi-script forwards one's request to the University's calendar systems. The cgi-script may be used to 1) embed calendar generated content within a web page or 2) generate standalone web pages.

How to Embed Calendar Generated Content Within Web Pages

To utilize Sundial's event retrieval interface and embed a calendar within web pages, you simply need to do a server side include (SSI) within your page. To do so, insert a line similar to the following within an html file.

<!--#include virtual="/cgi-bin/sundial/get?dateEnd=R60&brand=default&context=embedded"-->

The above SSI would produce the following.

Documentation on the use of server-side includes on Columbia's web servers can be found at the following URL:

http://www.columbia.edu/acis/webdev/ssi/index.html

How to Generate Standalone Web Pages

Using a form, one may submit event retrieval interface variables to the cgi-script via a GET or POST mechanism go obtain a Sundial generated calendar.

It is recommended that one specify the standalone context in order to obtain a standalone webpage.

Further Info

For more information about Sundial or the University Events Calendar please visit the following: