Event Websites generated by Open Event Webapp may contain a large number of sessions presented by different speakers. The Sessions are divided into the different group based on their type of track. For example, few sessions may belong to Database Track, few may belong to Machine Learning Track and so on. It is natural that the user may want to filter the visible sessions on the basis of tracks. Before we implemented the tracks filter using the track names list, we had a sub navbar on the tracks page for jumping to the different tracks of the event on a particular day. Below are the screenshots of that feature.

On Clicking the Design, Art, Community Track

But, it was not an elegant solution. We already had a track names list present on the side of the page which remained unused. A better idea was to use this side track names list to filter the sessions. Other event management sites like http://sched.org follow the same idea. The relevant issue for it is here and the major work can be seen in this Pull Request. Below is the screenshot of the unused side track names list.

The end behavior should be something like this, the user clicks on a track and only sessions belonging to the track should be visible and the rest be hidden. There should also be a button for clearing the applied filter and reverting the page back to its default view. Let’s jump to the implementation part.

First, we make the side track name list and make the individual tracks clickable.

<div class="track-names col-md-3 col-sm-3"> 
  {{#tracknames}}
    <div class="track-info">
      <span style="background-color: {{color}};" 
      class="titlecolor"></span>
      <span class="track-name" style="cursor: pointer">{{title}}
      </span>
    </div>
  {{/tracknames}}
</div>

Now we need to write a function for handling the user click event on the track name. Before writing the function, we need to see the basic structure of the tracks page. The divs with the class date-filter contain all the sessions scheduled on a given day. Inside that div, we have another div with class tracks-filter which contains the name of the track and all the sessions of that track are inside the div with class room-filter.

Below is a relevant block of code from the tracks.hbs file

<div class="date-filter">
  // Contains all the sessions present in a single day
  <div class="track-filter row">
    // Contains all the sessions of a single track
    <div class="row">
      // Contains the name of the track
      <h5 class="text">{{caption}}</h4>
    </div>
    <div class="room-filter" id="{{session_id}}">
      // Contain the information about the session
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

We iterate over all the date-filter divs and check all the track-filter divs inside it. We extract the name of the track and compare it to the name of the track which the user selected. If both of them are same, then we show that track div and all the sessions inside it. If the names don’t match, then we hide that track div and all the content inside it. We also keep a variable named flag and set it to 0 initially. If the user selected track is present on a given day, we set the flag to 1. Based on it, we decide whether to display that particular day or not. If the flag is set, we display the date-filter div of that day and the matched track inside it. Otherwise, we hide the div and all tracks inside it.

$('.track-name').click(function() {
  // Get the name of the track which the user clicked
  trackName = $(this).text();
  // Show the button for clearing the filter applied and reverting to the default view
  $('#filterInfo').show();
  $('#curFilter').text(trackName);
  // Iterate through the divs and show sessions of user selected track
  $('.date-filter').each(function() {
    var flag = 0;
    $(this).find('.track-filter').each(function() {
      var name = $(this).find('.text').text();
      if(name != trackName) {
        $(this).hide();
        return;
      }
      flag = 1;
      $(this).show();
    });
    if (flag) {
     $(this).show();
    } else {
      $(this).hide();
    }
  });
});

On Selecting the Android Track of FOSSASIA Summit, we see something like this

Now the user may want to remove the filter. He/she can just click on the Clear Filter button shown in the above screenshot to remove the filter and revert back to the default view of the page.

$('#clearFilter').click(function() {                                                                                                   
  trackFilterMode = 0;                                                                                                                 
  display();                                                                                                                           
  $('#filterInfo').hide();                                                                                                             
});

Back to the default view of the page

References:

• Fast Javascript Library JQuery
• Minimal Templating Engine Handlebars