Event Helper com­bines an intel­li­gent exten­sion with a no-frills cus­tom date field­type to offer a sim­ple but pow­er­ful way to man­age events in ExpressionEngine®.

• Set­up mul­ti­ple chan­nels with dis­crete set­tings on how start/​end dates, start/​end times, and expi­ra­tion dates are man­aged in each.
• Intel­li­gent­ly set the Entry Date and Expi­ra­tion Date for your events using the best com­bi­na­tion of sup­plied dates and times.
• Use native Date fields, or bet­ter yet, use Event Helper’s cus­tom date field to sim­pli­fy the date pick­er with date-only selec­tions and a con­fig­urable fixed timestamp.

Event Helper works seam­less­ly when cre­at­ing or updat­ing entries from both the con­trol pan­el and via Chan­nel Forms.

Requirements

• Expres­sio­nEngine® 3.1.0 or greater
• Sup­port for start times and end times requires the free Time Select field­type (includ­ed in download)

Documentation

Instal­la­tion

Upload the includ­ed event_​helper fold­er to your /​system/​user/​addons/​ direc­to­ry, then install Event Helper from the Add-On Man­ag­er screen.

If you’re upgrad­ing from EEvent Helper for EE2, upon instal­la­tion all pre­vi­ous EEvent Helper fields will be con­vert­ed to Event Helper fields, and the pre­vi­ous EEvent helper field­type and exten­sion will be unin­stalled auto­mat­i­cal­ly. (You will need to con­fig­ure your event chan­nels again.)

Con­fig­u­ra­tion

To con­fig­ure your first chan­nel that you want to mange with Event Helper, vis­it the Add-On Man­ag­er screen and click the Set­tings icon next to Event Helper. From there you can add set­tings for one or more channels. 

In the most com­mon sce­nario, you will choose Event Helper Date fields for both the start and end date fields, and option­al­ly Time Select fields for start and end time fields, then select the option to syn­chro­nize the Entry Date with your cho­sen Start Date, and set the Expi­ra­tion Date ​“intel­li­gent­ly.” This pro­vides you with a set­up where you can show upcom­ing events with a stan­dard Chan­nel Entries tag by using the show_future_entries="yes" para­me­ter, and like­wise show only past events by using the show_expired="yes" parameter. 

Field­type

The Event Helper Date field­type will cre­ate a date pick­er field in your entry form which dis­plays only the date, not the time, using the date for­mat select­ed in your local­iza­tion preferences.

The field­type has a sin­gle con­fig­u­ra­tion option, which deter­mines what time will be used when the field is saved as a time­stamp in the data­base. By default the time­stamp is set to mid­night, but you may choose any hour when con­fig­ur­ing each field.

Tem­plate Tags

Dis­play Event Helper Date fields in your tem­plates using stan­dard date for­mat­ting para­me­ters. You may also use the :relative mod­i­fi­er to dis­play rel­a­tive dates. Some examples:

{my_date_field format="%F %j%S, %Y"}
{my_date_field format="%m/%d%Y %g:%i%a"}
{my_date_field:relative}

Low Vari­ables

Event Helper Date fields can be used as Low Vari­ables. To out­put your vari­ables you must use the Low Vari­ables Parse tag to pass the for­mat or oth­er para­me­ters. Example:

{exp:low_variables:parse var="lv_my_date_variable" format="%F %j%S, %Y"}

Changelog

• 3.0.4 (January 21st, 2020)
  • Revert 3.0.3 change as it breaks for fields cre­at­ed under EE4+
• 3.0.3 (October 15th, 2019)
  • Only show fields from the cur­rent site in set­tings (h/​t Adri­enne Travis)
• 3.0.2 (February 26th, 2018)
  • Com­pat­i­bil­i­ty update for Expres­sio­nEngine 4.1
  • Fix for Event Helper Date and Time Select fields not appear­ing as field options in the Event Helper set­tings under EE4
• 3.0.1 (November 3rd, 2017)
  • Added EE4 compatibility
• 3.0.0 (November 20th, 2015)
  • Ini­tial release of EE3-com­pat­i­ble version