event registration/ payment

[yekibud]

I have a need to add event registration and payment to the current JEvents functionality.

I'm new to Joomla but have been developing PHP/MVC for several years. So I'm not sure how to go about improving existing components / contributing to Joomla projects. I was thinking of creating a module for JEvents that would depend on VirtueMart (for the event payment part). Does that make sense? Do you have any suggestions for how I should get started? Do you have any preferences or guidance on how I can contribute to the JEvents project to enable this functionality?

Thanks.

[Geraint]

An interesting thought - I've been developing paid subscription component based around Virtuemart as a product/payment engine and I'd been wondering about using a similar approach for event registration.

I've developed a couple very minor tweaks to Virtuemart that enable the creation of a subscription type product (i.e. no shipping required and not a download).

It should be possible to do something similar for registrations - I'll have a think

Geraint

[Stricnine]

Hi Geraint

I would be really interested in trying a registration module for Jevents... don't require payment option though.. I really just need a simple email form - I've been experimenting with CKForms which do exactly what I want from that front... all I really need to add is a bit of code to pass the event details along with the other info from the form... but my php is sketchy at best so don't know if you can help (or if this is a CK forms question??)

Yours hopefully

Regards
Chris

[Geraint]

I've done some preliminary work on this which looks promising - Virtuemart support 'free' products so could be used for free but restricted quantity event registrations.

Could be a few months before its all ready though I'm afraid

Geraint

[yekibud]

I've changed my mind about the Virtuemart dependency approach - I think this might be over-kill.

I implemented a simple registration process using the ChronoForms extension. I thought about writing a plugin, but I don't think that's possible because my changes depend on some of the JEvents core. I don't know if depending on another extension like ChronoForms is the most elegant approach, either - but it's a quick way to get event registration working. Let me know if you recommend a better way of doing this that could potentially be integrated with the project and shared.

Here's the approach I took:

1. add a "capacity" field to the jevents_vevent table
2. add capacity get/set and display logic to admin "Edit Event" view/model (I put it next to "priority")
3. create a registration form with ChronoForms with a field for the event id (it will automatically create a registration form table and give you a list view of registrees)
4. add logic to form code to display if event is in the future and not full, or message appropriately
5. add ChronoForms plugin tags to event description

Now I'm going to look into payment with Google Checkout, or something..

[Geraint]

Have you looked at the JEvents plugin hooks? They allow you to create linked tables and include this information in the event editing screens and displaying event detail.

Geraint

p.s. I agree virtuemart is overkill for free registration but the payment processing, invoicing etc. it would save a lot of duplicated developement

[yekibud]

So I implemented the payment part by adding another field to the "Edit Event" view for "price" and integrating Google Checkout. I think I would need to re-do the way I'm using the form part in order to make it plug-able and not dependent on ChronoForms. I think I'll re-visit prior to the production release of my site and do the re-factoring using the latest version JEvents at that time.

[M242]

Have you ck'd out DT Register, it links to Jevent and work really well w/paypal.
Cheers

[yekibud]

Hi, M242.

Thanks for your reply.

I have already implemented event registration and payment using JEvents and Google Checkout. I'm going to try to find some time to re-factor the code and make it plugable.

I would rather contribute back to the JEvents project than pay for DT Register.

[Geraint]

FYI I'm working on an event registration addon at the moment which should be available for initial testing by club members in 2-3 weeks time.

Geraint