Step-by-Step: Contextual Group Calendar and Breadcrumb, Using Calendar module, Date, Views and Panels 2

Here is a step by step visual guide for creating a contextual group calendar using Calendar module, Date, Views and Panels 2.

Work/Project Summary

I wanted full control over the evolution and design of calendaring in my site, but as importantly, I wanted to maintain group home-page context as users schedule and review events.

As you may know, using Event module takes control of calendaring AND disrupts the context it moves the user from the groups area of the site with the calendar displayed into the event module breadcrumb. This is confusing for users, and I wanted to eliminate that confusion.

In order to do this I had to eliminate the Event and og_calendar modules, but I also had to have a way for the group node id (not the group id) to be read and maintained by Drupal. Once I understood what argument handling code to pass through (not just arguments), all as pretty straightforward.

The step that complicated this is that I am using mini panels to place a calendar block on the page. This is not hard, but the panel must recognize the argument handling code in order to "know" where it is in order to maintain group context. By simply passing arguments through the mini panel to the view the whole set of 1) how to display events and 2) how to maintain context was all synched up, and I could move on to clarifying the breadcrumb.

The reason breadcrumbing was so important is that this is the only way to present navigational options with "Groups/"the-group-you-are-in"/calendar context at the top of each content area following the trail from the group home page block-view to calendar-view to event listing to node. To manage the breadcrumbs a template page snippet had to be developed.

Both the Arg handling code and the snippet are included in the walk-through.

I worked with Ted Sirbinsky of Lullabot and MothersClick fame on solving this problem.