format data in views.py for ajax - django

Question

I'me trying to use this eventCalendar in django : http://jquery-week-calendar.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/jquery.weekcalendar/full_demo/weekcalendar_full_demo.html
I suppose to write ajax codes myself but on the other hand I'me a newbie in jquery ajax,I wanna send event data include startTime,endTime,etc to show them on the calendar:
$('#calendar').weekCalendar({
data: function(callback){
$.getJSON("{% url DrHub.views.getEvents %}",
{
},
function(result) {
callback(result);
}
);
}
});
this calendar get data in this format:
return {
events : [
{
"id":1,
"start": new Date(year, month, day, 12),
"end": new Date(year, month, day, 13, 30),
"title":"Lunch with Mike"
},
{
"id":2,
"start": new Date(year, month, day, 14),
"end": new Date(year, month, day, 14, 45),
"title":"Dev Meeting"
},
...
]
};
how can I format fetched data from database in getEvents view?

Answer 1

from django.utils import simplejson
def some_view(request):
# Build the output -> it's a standard Python dict
output = {
"events": [
{
"id": 1,
"start": "2009-05-10T13:15:00.000+10:00",
"end": "2009-05-10T14:15:00.000+10:00",
"title":"Lunch with Mike"
},
]
}
# With db data you would do something like:
# events = Event.objects.all()
# for event in events:
# event_out = {
# "title": event.title,
# # other fields here
# }
# output['events'].append(event_out)
# Return the output as JSON
return HttpResponse(simplejson.dumps(output), mimetype='application/json')

Answer 2

You can construct the dictionary as usual, just take into account that strings for dates will not be interpreted in javascript without processing. My advice is to directly send javascript interpretable dates, not strings, as follows:
from django.utils import simplejson
import datetime
import time
occ.start = time.mktime(occ.start.timetuple())*1000
occ.end = time.mktime(occ.end.timetuple())*1000
event = {'id': occ.id,'title':occ.title,'start':occ.start,'end':occ.end,'body':occ.description,'readOnly': '%r' %occ.read_only,'recurring':'%r' % occ.recurring,'persisted': '%r' % occ.persisted,'event_id':occ.event.id}
mimetype = 'application/json'
return HttpResponse(simplejson.dumps(event),mimetype)
take into account that the calendar expects the 'events' key so:
$.getJSON(url, function(data){
res = {events:data};
//alert(JSON.stringify(res, null, 4));
callback(res);
});
If you preffer processing on the javascript side try the library datejs that can convert a date from text.