Custom Field searching

Question

I have some more questions and I hope I don't waste your time .. I use EE3.4.7. and Calendar (EE3 version) .. this questions continues from here Custom field as a parameter

1. Since custom field searching is not possible with calendar:events my problem is this: I would like to give the opportunity to user to search for events in a city in certain dates. Now the city can be either a text field or a category, and at the moment I have a category group with events categories (music, theatre, cinema etc.) Should I create another group with cities?

2. Can the city be a Stash variable or Low variable in a search form? Can it work that way?

3. Also, can Calendar work in combination with Tag? For example can the city be a Tag field?

4. Can I make searches with sql queries on the database tables to solve the above problem?

5. In the end would custom field searching be available as a custom solution and what would be that cost?

Answer 1

I think you could use Stash for this. Setting a list of your calendar event data and then using regex in Stash to filter based on your custom field.

{exp:stash:set_list
    name="cal_events" 
    parse_tags="yes"
}
    {exp:calendar:events
        channel="events"
        date_range_start="year-month-01"
        date_range_end="year-month-last"
        limit="20" paginate="both"
    }
        {!--set stash variable for field to search--}
        {stash:event_city2}{calendar:event_city2}{/stash:event_city2}

        {!--set other variables--}
        {stash:title}{calendar:title}{/stash:title}
        {stash:event_start_date}{calendar:event_start_date format="%F %j, %Y"}{/stash:event_start_date}
        {!--etc...--}
    {/exp:calendar:events}
{/exp:stash:set_list}


{exp:stash:get_list
    name="cal_events" 
    match="#Athens#"
    against="event_city2"
}
    {if count == 1}
        <h5>Field we searched: {event_city2}</h5>
        <h6>Total Results: {total_results}</h6>
    {/if}

    <ul>
        <li>Title: {title}</li>
        <li>Event Start Date: {event_start_date}</li>
        <li>etc...</li>
    </ul>
    <hr>
{/exp:stash:get_list}

You'll have to check the docs for Stash on using Match and Against parameters. (You might also flip it from my example, and use match against parameters on the set_list instead of get_list, only setting variables you need.)

Couple of things:

• This may decrease performance, but saving the stash variable and re-caching when necessary may help. See Mustash for help with managing Stash variables.
• If you try it and don't get the results you expect, try adding the parameter "output='yes'" to set_list tag to see what's being set in the first place.
• I haven't tested the above at all. Woohoo!