FOSSASIA‘s Open Event Server is the REST API backend for the event management platform, Open Event. Here, the event organizers can create their events, add tickets for it and manage all aspects from the schedule to the speakers. Also, once he makes his event public, others can view it and buy tickets if interested.

To make event promotion easier, we also provide the event organizer to export his event as a Pentabarf XML file. Pentabarf XML is used to store events/conferences in a format which most of the scheduling applications can read and add that particular event/conference to the user’s schedule.

Server side – generating the Pentabarf XML file

Here we will be using the pentabarf package for Python for parsing and creating the file.

from pentabarf.Conference import Conference
from pentabarf.Day import Day
from pentabarf.Event import Event
from pentabarf.Person import Person
from pentabarf.Room import Room

• We define a class PentabarfExporter which has a static method export(event_id).
• Query the event using the event_id passed and start forming the event in the required format:

event = EventModel.query.get(event_id)
diff = (event.ends_at - event.starts_at)

conference = Conference(title=event.name, start=event.starts_at, end=event.ends_at,
                       days=diff.days if diff.days > 0 else 1,
                       day_change="00:00", timeslot_duration="00:15",
                       venue=event.location_name)
dates = (db.session.query(cast(Session.starts_at, DATE))
        .filter_by(event_id=event_id)
        .filter_by(state='accepted')
        .filter(Session.deleted_at.is_(None))
        .order_by(asc(Session.starts_at)).distinct().all())

• We have queried for the dates of the event and saved it in dates.
• We will now iterate over each date and query the microlocations who have a session on that particular date.

for date in dates:
   date = date[0]
   day = Day(date=date)
   microlocation_ids = list(db.session.query(Session.microlocation_id)
                            .filter(func.date(Session.starts_at) == date)
                            .filter_by(state='accepted')
                            .filter(Session.deleted_at.is_(None))
                            .order_by(asc(Session.microlocation_id)).distinct())

• For each microlocation thus obtained, we will query for accepted sessions to be held at those microlocations.
• We will also initialize a Room for each microlocation.

for microlocation_id in microlocation_ids:
   microlocation_id = microlocation_id[0]
   microlocation = Microlocation.query.get(microlocation_id)
   sessions = Session.query.filter_by(microlocation_id=microlocation_id) \
       .filter(func.date(Session.starts_at) == date) \
       .filter_by(state='accepted') \
       .filter(Session.deleted_at.is_(None)) \
       .order_by(asc(Session.starts_at)).all()

   room = Room(name=microlocation.name)

• We will now iterate over the aabove-obtained sessions and instantiate an Event for each session.
• Then we will iterate over all the speakers of that session and instantiate a Person for each speaker.
• Finally, we will add that Event to the Room we created earlier.

for session in sessions:

   session_event = Event(id=session.id,
                         date=session.starts_at,
                         start=session.starts_at,
                         duration=str(session.ends_at - session.starts_at) + "00:00",
                         track=session.track.name,
                         abstract=session.short_abstract,
                         title=session.title,
                         type='Talk',
                         description=session.long_abstract,
                         conf_url=url_for('event_detail.display_event_detail_home',
                                          identifier=event.identifier),
                         full_conf_url=url_for('event_detail.display_event_detail_home',
                                               identifier=event.identifier, _external=True),
                         released="True" if event.schedule_published_on else "False")

   for speaker in session.speakers:
       person = Person(id=speaker.id, name=speaker.name)
       session_event.add_person(person)

   room.add_event(session_event)

• Then we will add the room to the day and then add each day to the conference.

day.add_room(room)
conference.add_day(day)

• Finally, we will call the generate method of the conference to generate the XML file. This can be directly written to the file.

return conference.generate("Generated by " + get_settings()['app_name'])

Obtaining the Pentabarf XML file:

Firstly, we have an API endpoint which starts the task on the server.

GET - /v1/events/{event_identifier}/export/pentabarf

Here, event_identifier is the unique ID of the event. This endpoint starts a celery task on the server to export the event as a Pentabarf XML file. It returns the task of the URL to get the status of the export task. A sample response is as follows:

{
  "task_url": "/v1/tasks/b7ca7088-876e-4c29-a0ee-b8029a64849a"
}

The user can go to the above-returned URL and check the status of his Celery task. If the task completed successfully he will get the download URL. The endpoint to check the status of the task is:

and the corresponding response from the server –

{
  "result": {
    "download_url": "/v1/events/1/exports/http://localhost/static/media/exports/1/zip/OGpMM0w2RH/event1.zip"
  },
  "state": "SUCCESS"
}

The file can be downloaded from the above-mentioned URL.

Hence, now the event can be added to any scheduling app which recognizes the Pentabarf XML format.

References

• Open Event Server
• Python
• XML Writer
• Celery