As the globe continues to migrate to the web, it becomes more and more important for professionals to stay organized and focused. Whether in an office or the comforts of one’s home, it is critical that we all stay on top of our schedules.
Thankfully, there is no shortage of calendar applications on the market today.
But what if we told you that you could build your very own version of, say, Google Calendar?
With Bubble, you can easily develop calendar apps like Edo Agenda, Cal, and TimeBlocks.
If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, this blog post is for you.
Let’s start!
Establishing your database
When developing your calendar application, you’ll want to start configuring our database so it functions accordingly.
Bubble optimizes a pre-built database that makes it faster to fill out unique fields with different data types.
To make our calendar app functional, you can choose to pattern after the following fields and data types:
Data type: Calendarevent
Fields:
- Name
- Description
- Start date/time
- End date/time
(Source: https://bubble.io/blog/build-google-calendar-clone-no-code/)
Developing your calendar
It’s impossible to work on a calendar application without a calendar, so that’s exactly what we’ll build first.
One of the best things about Bubble is its vast plugin library that allows you to effortlessly integrate with your app. Plugins are a tremendous addition to your app, allowing you to better streamline your brand objectives to your app.
For this particular calendar project, we’ll resort to our free calendar plugin to begin.
Once the plugin is installed, you can use the calendar element to add a calendar to any page.
Now that this element is part of your page, we’ll proceed to match your database by configuring its data source. In this scenario, we’ll need the calendar to give a preview of the calendar events data type that you established.
We’ll also supplement an additional constraint to show only the events the current user created.
We’ll also need to align the end time and start time fields from the appropriate data properties for each event we created.
Then, we’ll work on matching our event name data field with the event caption field for each event.
Lastly, we’ll split into data and time our date input elements. This is crucial to successfully attach specific times to the events we create.
How to create new events
When you’ve established your calendar UI, proceed to develop your app’s main workflows.
The first workflow you’ll need to develop is a function that lets users create new events. With this workflow editor, you’ll have to create an event that’s triggered when a user clicks on any of the calendar days.
The succeeding step in your workflow will be to preview a display popup element. Popups come in handy when you need to create events or display information without leading the user away from the current page.
In the actual popup element, we’ll optimize a combination of multiline input, text input, and data-and-time elements. This allows one to add specific details to their event. Much like what one would do with Google Calendar.
From there, we’ll build a new workflow when a user clicks the “create button.”
In this workflow, we’ll then need to “create a new thing.” This time, the new thing we’re creating is an event.
Once done, you’ll want to match the data fields you’ve established for your calendar events with the on-page elements.
And lastly, we’ll also supplement one last step to the workflow, making sure the popup element doesn’t reappear when a user creates a new event.
Viewing and editing events
One very common feature calendar apps have is their ability to reschedule events.
By optimizing another popup element, you can create a feature that lets users view the particulars of an event. What’s more, it should also be able to make changes to its data fields.
You can do this by developing a workflow that a user can trigger when they click on a “calendar’s existing event.”
After that, we’ll need to display another popup that enables users to check the content of a particular event. However, we’ll need to send the data through first before letting this popup appear.
What we’ll want to show is the calendar’s current event.
When the view/edit popup receives this content, we’ll have to create another workflow step to show this popup element.
Because we need to display existing data for this popup, the data type has to be updated for it to be an event. Next, the calendar’s current event also has to be added as the data source. Lastly, we’ll need to display the existing content that was placed when the user created the event, so take note of the input fields.
This is quickly added when we configure the initial content field for every element. What we’ll want to display here should also be taken from the calendar’s current event.
When one of the input fields is changed, we’ll have to develop another workflow that allows this calendar event to be updated when a user clicks on the update button.
Like creating the calendar event, this workflow is made by making changes to a thing versus creating a thing from scratch.
Finally, you’ll configure every on-page element with appropriate information in your database. After that, an additional step should be added to make sure this popup element is closed when a user makes changes to this event.
How to delete an event
Calendar apps aren’t calendar apps when you can’t delete an event. That said, the last feature we’ll want to build is the ability to delete events.
We’ll then create a workflow from the same view/edit popup when a user clicks on the delete button.
Secondly, we’ll choose to delete a thing.
As expected, what we’ll want to get rid of is the calendar’s current event.
Last but not the least, add a step to make sure the popup element doesn’t appear when this event is deleted.
And just like that, you now have your own functional version of a messaging app!
Do you have other questions about how to develop programs like this? Check our courses to learn more about building your app.
Give us a call, and we’ll help you out!
(Source and screenshots from: https://bubble.io/blog/build-whatsapp-clone-no-code/)
