wp-SwimTeam

I have created snapshot zip files for the wp-SwimTeam plugin and the required version of phpHtmlLib and linked to them on the Download and Installation page.  This eliminates the need for figuring out how to do a SubVersion export.  At this point the plugin is reasonable stable so I will do my best to keep the ZIP files up to date.

This afternoon I committed a bunch of changes which complete (I hope) the standard event functionality.  Standard Events are the events a team would typically run at every meet.  I envision them being set up for a team’s home pool so the course should be set to match the home pool but it is up to the end user.  Once defined, the meets can be reordered to match the typical order of events.

The next phase will allow creating of meet specific meets and the standard events can be used to initialize the events for a meet.  When creating meet events, the the course for the pool is different than the standard events, the meet events will be adjusted acordingly.  This will allow a team with a home pool in meters to easily set up a meet at yards pool – if the same events are used in the same order, it will be a simple task.

Once the events are created for meet, the order can be changed on a per meet basis and other events can be added or deleted.

In order to keep a history of swim times (aka results), the events the times are associated with need to be defined.  I guess technically that isn’t true, a simple time history could be kept but as long as I am going to import times and keep them as a history, might as well associate them with a meet too.

To do this I started working on defining the events for each meet.  Since most teams swim the same events in the same order at most of their meets, I have established a “default” set of events.  I have this new functionality working now.  What is left to do is to elegantly re-order the events (since re-ordering them is inevitable) and to use them as a basis for populating the events for an actual meet.

This functionality is also the basis of Opt-in/Opt-out because I have decided to let swimmers opt in or out of individual events and as well as entire meets.  This is a need for the MacDolphins because we many of our swimmers are in year round school and since our league swims on Tuesday nigths, for some portion of our team, it is a school night.  We have a fair number of swimmers who opt out of the later events because of it being a school night.

I have had a couple ask recently about a demo site for wp-SwimTeam so I think I am going to set one up that people can play with.  The plugin is current live on the MacDolphins web site but since that is a real team and real data, it isn’t a suitable sandbox for people to explore.

If I can set up another instance of WordPress underneath this one to demonstrate the plugin, I will make it available for play with.  I am not sure how to assign new users the necessary permission to admin the demo site since that would provide them a fair amount of control over the actual WordPress install itself.  Hmmm … need to think that through before I turn it on!

Last night I committed a bunch of changes to clean up the Meet Schedule Short Code.  Previously it only worked for the current season, the optional seasonid argument was ignored.  It is now working – if the seasonid argument is not included in the short code then the active season will be used.

I also added a column for the Id in the Admin view of the seasons, swim clubs, and meets since the Id is used in the short codes.  By putting the Id in the list, there isn’t a need to drill down into the item detail to see what the Id is in order to use it in a short code.

My Access SQL problem is solved.  Access can’t do what I wanted to do but the folks at WinSwim modified their custom SQL query report to allow for error supression which solves the problem.  I just can’t say enough about the excellent support from WinSwim.

I don’t know how most swim teams manage their swimmers but ours revolves around age groups.  Everything is organized by age group, coordianted by age group, reported by age group, etc.  I have been creating Win Swim Reports using Crystal Reports to present the data in the database in a format our team is used to seeing it it.

Working on these reports is the primary reason I haven’t made much progress on the plugin lately.  Swim team is winding down, our last meet is tomorrow night and once the season is over I expect to be able to work on the plugin again.  There are a number of things I’d like to implement while the experience is still fresh in my memory.  If I wait I’ll probably forget why I thought something was a good idea! 

While it isn’t really relevant to the wp-swimteam plugin, it is related to swim team.  Our team is using WinSwim for meet management which relies on Crystal Reports for generating reports.  I have been customizing reports for our team and am working on one which requires me to really poke into Access.

I have done quite a bit of work with MySQL so it is frustrating to encounter SQL constructs which Access doen’t support.  Right now I am struggling with how to determine if a table in Access already exists and if it does, I want to drop it.  What a PITA.  Access doesn’t support the DROP TABLE IF EXISTS construct which MySQL (and others) support.

If you know how to do this, please tell me how in the comments! 

I was following some WordPress links today and came to Brian Gardener’s theme pages and decided to load his Revolutions Blog Theme on this site.  Needs a bit more color but I do like it better than the Silver Light theme I was using.  I still think I’ll end doing something with SandBox or the WP Themer Kit at some point.

As the season comes to a close we are seeing a lot of scratches for our last couple meets. For this week we will be missing about 40% of our swimmers. Previously I had written about the pros and cons of Opt-in and Opt-out for swim meets and after watching this season unfold, I believe my thinking still holds.

Originally I had thought that opting in or out from a meet as a binary decision:  A swimmer was either participating or not.  It turns out it isn’t that simple.  Year round school is pretty popular here in Wake County, North Carolina and roughly 1/3 to 1/2 of our swimmers are in school for either all or part of the summer swimming season.  Since our meets are held on Tuesday nights, they tend to run pretty late and some parents are taking their kids out of the late events (e.g. Butterfly and/or Freestyle Relay).

This has resulted in what my wife is referring to as a “partial scratch”.  In addition to kids needing to leave early, we have also had some kids come late due to other commitments so they are missing one or two events early in the meet.

So as I sit down to implement opt-in and opt-out, I have concluded I need to account for partial participation in a swim meet.

I have been using the Inline Google Maps plugin on the MacDolphins site but lately it has been flaky to say the least.  Sometimes the Google Map is displayed and sometimes it isn’t.  There isn’t any real rhyme or reason as to when it displays and when it doesn’t that I could find AND the plugin is actually hard to use, particularly for the casual author.

So I implemented a new short code for Google Maps called wpst_google_map which will take an address as an argument and display a Google Map.  The plugin uses this as part of the Club Profile to map a swim club for directions and such.  The short code is based on a Google Maps class called Phoogle Maps which has been extended to work with the plugin.  Phoogle Maps works pretty much as advertised.  I wish it didn’t echo it’s output directly to the output buffer but fortunately PHP can control the output buffer so it can be captured and used in the context of the plugin.

[wpst_google_map address="1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington DC, 20006" align="center"]

The short code syntax above will display a map similar to this: