Posted by geodaniel on January 15, 2008 at 10:37am
I'm working on a couple of sites at the moment that are in this sort of area, and one of the key parts of them is going to be the availability calendar, so site visitors can see at a glance if there are rooms available or not. I've looked at the availability module and also the openresort module and while they are both going in the right direction, neither quite gets all the way there.
Do you have any suggestions for modules that you've used for this sort of purpose, or should we put effort into improving the capabilities of the ones I mentioned (or simplifying the complex OpenResort module)?
Comments
Module in the works
I've been working on a module to do this (based on availability module), and it's ready to release to my customer's site though not yet cleaned up and ready for general re-use. I'll post here when I've released something. Basically what it lets you do is 'availability-enable' different node types and choose how many months of availability you'd like to show in the calendar on each node (or in a different place, if you like). For each node you can choose which day to start the weeks on, put a little note (e.g. a price) next to each week and set the availability for each day.
Hi Dan It sounds like what
Hi Dan
It sounds like what you've produced would work for one of my projects. Although I think my requirements would be met by availability module with the output themed into a pretty calendar view. I'm not sure how best to do that at the moment, but I look forward to seeing what you've achieved.
regards
Nigel
I also thought the same initially
I also thought the same initially, but soon realised that I had to add weekly notes and be able to select different types of availability for each day. I started with availability and ripped it apart basically. I launched the project last night (see www.manxfarmhols.com/prices-and-availability), so you can see there what it's like from the end user side.
Hopefully I'll get a chance in the next week or so to clean the code up and release it.
Looks great. If you’re
Looks great. If you’re definitely going to make this available then I'll wait for you to release it. I’d be happy to contribute in making it release ready if that would help out.
regards
Nigel
Looks great!
Hi Geodaniel,
I have a customer who needs an availability calendar for his b&b, I also checked out the openresort system, but that's not really what I'm looking for (too complex). This seems more like it! Do you have any idea when this module will be available?
Maybe also a good idea to link the available dates in a contact reservation form?
Looking forward to the result, I'm fairly new to drupal, but if I can help you in any way, just let me know!
thanks,
Ruben
Linking to reservations form
Thanks for your interest in the module. I haven't had a chance to release it yet, but I've started cleaning it up so it's ready.
Do you have an example of how you might expect to see the click-through to a reservation form working? What would you use to run the reservation form? What would you click on (e.g. the week, individual days, etc)?
Currently building a rental
Currently building a rental site and it seems like your module would be perfect for it. I second Ruben's idea to have the available dates carry over to the contact/reservation form. Can't wait to see it!
Cheers,
Shawn
Availability Calendars module
I finally cleaned the module up a bit further last night so it's usable, and released it for Drupal 5.x at http://drupal.org/project/availability_calendars
Please feel free to try it out and create issues in the issue queue for any suggestions you may have.
(note that the module was originally based on the Availability module, but heavily modified, hence the new project)
Thanks,
Dan