Calendar is Screwy

[Zoopy]

I put the TF2 Highlander event on the Calender as Ranged Event. It shows up on the calendar correctly, but on the Homepage the calender shows the event on the 18th (instead of the 17th) and when you click on it it says "There are no events to display" (which is true because there is no event on the 18th).

[Bommando]

Originally Posted by Zoopy

I put the TF2 Highlander event on the Calender as Ranged Event. It shows up on the calendar correctly, but on the Homepage the calender shows the event on the 18th (instead of the 17th) and when you click on it it says "There are no events to display" (which is true because there is no event on the 18th).

It might be a timezone anomaly, since it shows up correctly for me. Maybe the home page reads your timezone from your browser, while the calendar reads it from your forum profile.

Make sure you've set the correct timezone locally in your forum profile.

It would help if anyone else in Eastern Time could reproduce this error.

[Zoopy]

Mines set to Eastern Time. So from you homepage you can click the linkable date and it brings you to the event page?

[Hidus]

Works fine here, I'm EST.

Edit: Ok I misunderstood you. It shows up fine within the calendar but the mini cal on the homepage incorrectly shows it on the 18th.

[Jonan]

Mine shows up correctly.

[Bommando]

Originally Posted by Zoopy

Mines set to Eastern Time. So from you homepage you can click the linkable date and it brings you to the event page?

Yes, but mine shows up on the 18th on the home page grid, since I am +16 hours from the event. I can click it and it takes me to the correct day. That's why I think there must be a mismatch between the way the home page reads your timezone and how the calendar reads it.

I'll dig into the code to check it out.

EDIT:

heh, I am amazed nobody picked this up in the minicalendar before.

The home page uses a module system called vBadvanced. The loaded module, minicalendar.php loads the dates using the following code:

PHP Code:

$vba_today = getdate(TIMENOW - $vbulletin->options['hourdiff']); 


The 'hourdiff' option is obviously your UTC offset as set in your settings. However, it's one simple arithmetic error which throws it out: If my offset is say -5 (EST), then they're trying to subtract -5 from TIMENOW, so they're effectively adding 5 to TIMENOW, which should be the opposite. If you are behind UTC, then you should be adding -5 (which ends up subtracting 5).

So, a change to:

PHP Code:

$vba_today = getdate(TIMENOW + $vbulletin->options['hourdiff']); 


Seems to have fixed the problem. Note that the minicalendar also uses a caching system to save on queries. I reset this for the purpose of the test, but I don't know whether this resets it globally or per-user. So, I have set it back to cache every 12 hours, but am not sure whether you trigger the cache or the system. If it's you, then you may not see the result for another 12 hours. Please report any anomalies.

Also, in the meantime, I enabled birthdays to show up on the calendar

EDIT 2:

It seems that the problem is fixed for you guys, but not for me now. I think that hourdiff might be read from the forum global settings rather than the user-specific settings. In which case, it'll show right for most of US / Canadians, but not for other timezones due to them being outside the forum default.

I'll leave it as-is for now and look into it further later.

EDIT 3:

It does seem to use a global setting, since the user-specific setting is:

PHP Code:

$vbulletin->userinfo['tzoffset'] 


Not only that, but the caching system seems to cache at the last viewing user, therefore if the cache is written by a different timezone, subsequent users in a different timezone will see the wrong zone for the next 12 hours.

The only way to resolve this is to turn caching off for the moment, but I'm reluctant to do that due to load. I'll leave it as-is for now.

[Zoopy]

And nobody believed me that the Calender was screwy? Dates appear correctly on the calender now, even birthdays show up highlighted for me now (never use to before). Damn, thats a lot of problems.

[Bommando]

Originally Posted by Zoopy

And nobody believed me that the Calender was screwy? Dates appear correctly on the calender now, even birthdays show up highlighted for me now (never use to before). Damn, thats a lot of problems.

Unfortunately, it'll probably revert back to incorrect time if the cache resets to someone in another timezone. I'll see if I can adjust the code to suit all users, but only if it means only a small performance hit. Hopefully I can tweak it so it dynamically checks your timezone, but caches the rest of the info.

This is low on the priority list right now, but I'll definitely get to it.

[Zoopy]

Yeah, it just went back to the 18th. Damn non-North Americans ruining my calender.