2.30.0 and MMM-CalendarExt3 missing calendars

[redfishbluefish]

@sdetweil I saw your note in the other thread about setting maximumEntries per calendar. I guess it means with this change there’s more thought required to determine the “right” values for each of the calendars you want to add.

Example: As of today, Jan 2, this configuration for the calendar will show the “New Year’s Day” event on CalendarExt3:

config: {
	broadcastPastEvents: true,
	calendars: [
	{
		url: "https://ics.calendarlabs.com/39/f7480acf/Canada_Holidays.ics",
		name: "can_holiday",
		maximumEntries: 16,
	},
},

The following configuration will not show the “New Year’s Day” event:

config: {
	broadcastPastEvents: true,
	calendars: [
	{
		url: "https://ics.calendarlabs.com/39/f7480acf/Canada_Holidays.ics",
		name: "can_holiday",
		maximumEntries: 15,
	},
},

If I set maximumNumberOfDays: 180 then it actually changes the start date of the event array sliding window and the “New Year’s Day” event will show if maximumEntries: 15.

Which makes me realize that the combination of:

broadcastPastEvents: true,
maximumNumberOfDays: 365, // default value

will actually return 2 years worth of events (assuming you don’t exceed the maximumEntries setting).

[sdetweil]

@redfishbluefish well… could be up to 2 years if maximumNumberOfDays is 365 (default)

for each calendar ({…url…})
get the cal maximumEvents (specified, or default if not)

//new code
save that ONLY cal maximumEvents on the list of total events
this COULD clip off events…
//
old code , save cal events on list of total events (all from cal)
//
we process the ical in the order presented, we ‘assume’ it is date ordered,
but do not check…

sort the events by date   // ONLY time ALL events are sorted in order explicitly
   this WILL intermingle events from different cals by date

send that to the other modules
in the ui
clip list to the FIRST maximumEvents. (old and new)
we COULD have too many OLD events and end up with no UPCOMING events in the list

I’ve been thinking about that problem… and i think the only non-disruptive way to fix it is to clip NEW events only… that means we would have to FIND the point in the list for first new event, or last old event

so it there are 300 events, and max entries is 10, today we use the first 10, and could throw away 290
if in the 300 its 250 old and 50 new, we would never see the new, even with maxevents set to 200
but if we JUST clipped new
we would have sent 260… 250 and 10 new then we wouldn’t have these crazy UI troubles with maxevents flooding the screen (cause maxevents 10 would give us 10 for the screen)
because we had to get maximum events up to get to the new ones in the total list

[redfishbluefish]

@sdetweil thank you for supporting the calendar module!

For my specific use case, I don’t display the default calendar module, it’s just used to fetch and broadcast events for CalendarExt3. With this in mind, the idea of a sliding window centered on a date (today in most cases) makes the most sense to me.

Is there a reason why the default for maximumEntries is 10? I had assumed performance but it looks like this is actually what’s used to control the number of events displayed.

[sdetweil]

@redfishbluefish i do not know, been that way since i got here in 2017. i assume it was for the display list.

generally you try to add without breaking old stuff.

i didn’t start working on cal til 21, when our users kept having trouble. same thing as now. mostly work on the event parser

[sdetweil]

@redfishbluefish
apply this fix
see
https://forum.magicmirror.builders/topic/19282/version-2-30-0-calendar-fix-for-clipping-broadcast-events

[redfishbluefish]

@sdetweil thanks for the fix! I really appreciate your effort.

Just in case it’s useful for someone else who runs into the same problem, with the fix applied and my calendar configuration that worked in 2.29.0, I see:

[Debug] [Calendar] self update (calendar.js, line 950)
[Debug] pushing 18 events to total with room for 10 (calendar.js, line 695)
[Debug] events for calendar=10 (calendar.js, line 697)
[Debug] pushing 246 events to total with room for 10 (calendar.js, line 695)
[Debug] events for calendar=20 (calendar.js, line 697)
[Info] sorting events count=20 (calendar.js, line 699)
[Info] slicing events total maxcount=10 (calendar.js, line 739)

And when I set a new maximumEntries per calendar I get:

[Debug] pushing 34 events to total with room for 50 (calendar.js, line 695)
[Debug] events for calendar=34 (calendar.js, line 697)
[Debug] pushing 295 events to total with room for 500 (calendar.js, line 695)
[Debug] events for calendar=329 (calendar.js, line 697)
[Info] sorting events count=329 (calendar.js, line 699)

This does result in a different behaviour for users of other calendar modules as of 2.30.0 so might be handy if the authors could update their recommendations in their documentation?

[sdetweil]

@redfishbluefish the pushing events for cal
thru to before the last sorting are ONLY used for the UI, not for the broadcast

the broadcast does NOT clip AT ALL with this fix, just like before
IF you don’t have the UI visible(position commented out or not supplied in default cal) , all of this is noise (wasted logging)