Competition Planning Tool Help

Documentation index:

Purpose
Creating your view
What does it all mean?
Embedding the output in a club web page

Purpose

In order to keep our club members informed of priority events, year after year I had to continually update our club website with events of interest. This requires quite a bit of effort. Being an engineer, I finally decided to write some flexible code that I could embed in my web pages . A system that would create a criteria based report of the local tournaments. This project uses the standard API available provided by AskFred and is not a hack.
I intend to keep this service going as long as I have access to AskFred (Thanks Peet!)
The system was designed to be emedded in a website (A few clubs have taken advantage of this).

Its important to note that ALL local event information is dyanmically pulled from the AskFred database. There isn't any stale data.

In addition to local events, I have annually added the current season's national events.

Suggested uses:

Clubs that want to embed a specific, or a set of specific scheduled events on their web site
Individuals who want a quick look at competitions that are available in their area without sifting through AskFred
Division management can use to help schedule events that avoid events in other nearby divisions.
Coaches that want to provide guidance to students regarding types of meets to attend
Parents that need to schedule their childs events

Creating a custom quick view:

This form can be found at: https://infosvc.net/tools/compPlanningPS.php

Use this form to make your search selections. Select your search criteria and click on "GO". This will output the events in AskFred that you are specifically looking for. If you don't like the way the report looks, click on the browser back button, and make your changes, and click on "GO" again. Continue this process until you get the report you want. Then to see the report any time, bookmark the page. The information is dyanmic, so every time that you browse the page, it will update the data in real time from the AskFred database.

Selection criteria

Division(s): Select the divisions that you want to see. You can select multiple divisions by holding down the control key and clicking on the divisions that you want to see.

Weapon: The default is all weapons. To select the weapon or weapons that you are interested in, hold down the control key, and select your weapons.

Gender: The default is all. If you want to specify gender, click on the gender you want for your search criteria. Selecting "Men" will only show men's events, "Women" will only show women's events, and mixed will only show mixed events. Example: if you wanted to only see men's events, select "Men". If you want to see all men's events including mixed events, select "Men" and "Mixed".

Age Groups: The default is all. To narrow down the search, you can select one or more specific age groups. Holding down the control key and clicking on an age group will allow you to select multiple age groups.

Remove header: It is recommended that you keep this section in the output as it documents the selection criteria.

Include unsanctioned events: Although most events in AskFred are USFA sanctioned events, there are many events that are club only or unsanctioned (No ratings given). There are times when an organizer will put a event in AskFred as a placeholder, and will get the USFA sanctioning authority to approve later. It is recommended that you include these events in the report. If an event is not sanctioned, it will show this in the output.

Summary listing: The organizers comments are seen under "Venue". I recommend not selecting this option unless you are embedding the report into a web page and are short on space. Organizer's comments can provide some very pertinent information.

Show only "C" and under events: Still considered beta code, however I haven't gotten any negative feedback or bug reports. This criteria selects "C" and under events.

Remove national events: NACs and national championship events are not in the AskFred database (Why? I have no idea! They should be...). This option removes NACs and national championships. The usafencing.org site is the definitive source of information for national events. ROCs are not displayed unless they are in the AskFred database for the divisions you have selected. Future enhancements might include an option to include all ROCs nationwide. That is a low priority unless I get feedback that it should be.

What's in the output?

Goldenrod sections: These are National and some regional events. Becasue of the additional hand coding required, only some Region 4 events have been added to the system each year. When an API to the nationl events database is released, all of the events can e mased up and better serve the users.
The first element is the calendar icon. If you are using google calendar, you can click on the icon and it will put the entry into your google calendar. This does not work for any other calendar system. Next are the date range and location are on the same line. On the next lines, will be a list of events (NAC or national championships).
This is reference information only. The definitive source is usafencing.org!

Green sections: These are future events. The following information is provided.
Line 1:

Calendar icon - Click to add to google calendar (google calendar only)
Tournament name - Click on this to open up the AskFred page for this tournament

Line 2:

Venue - Click on this link to open a google map for the location of the event
City and state where the event occurs (Across from Venue)

Under the Green section: Event listings

Date - Date of the event
Event - Event type
Check in Close - When checkin closes for that event
Number of entrants - Number of pre-registrations for the event. This is linked to the AskFred "who's coming" information for that event on AskFred. Clicking this will take you to the "who's coming" page for that specific event on AskFred.
Possible/Predicted rating for the event

Embedding the report into your club or personal webpage

One of the values of this application is that you can embed the output into your club web site.
This can be a bit advanced for some, but all of the tools are there to place the info on your web site.

What I do is embed the URL (web site) I want to show on my site in a container using an iframe.

Here is what it looks like:

<iframe
src="https://infosvc.net/tools/compPlanning.php?amp;future&no_ads&summary&weap ons=Epee&divisions=7,8,9,10&display_w=820&list_cnt =6"
style="border-width: 0pt;" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" height="400" width="860">
</iframe>

If you were to copy and paste the above into your web page, you would see exactly what I have on my site. There are a couple of things that you would want to change.

1) Create the view that you want using https://infosvc.net/tools/compPlanningPS.php Then Copy the URL from your browser and replace the URL above with it.
2) The height and width define the size of the frame that you are going to be displaying the remote web content in.
3) The display_w setting defines the width of the application inside of the frame. This should be a value of the frame width minus 40.

The code below is an example for epee events in Colorado. The URL is what you would want to replace as needed, and then add the display_w information at the end:

<iframe
src="https://infosvc.net/tools/compPlanning.php?nobanner&future&no_ads&summary&weap ons=Epee&divisions=48&display_w=560"
style="border-width: 0pt;" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" height="400" width="600">
</iframe>

-or-

<iframe
src="https://infosvc.net/tools/compPlanning.php?&nobanner&future&no_ads&summary&weap ons=Epee,&divisions=48&display_w=560"
style="border-width: 0pt;" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" height="2048" width="600">
</iframe>