You’re running an event, but there is limited capacity. You want people to sign up but you don’t want anyone to try to sign up just to realize the event is already fully booked. Group scheduling is the perfect way to control your event participation and using the Nylas Ruby SDK makes it possible.
All you need to do is to create an event, specify its capacity, and let people signing up know how many spots are left for them to join.
If you already have the Nylas Ruby SDK installed and your Python environment configured, then continue along with the blog.
Otherwise, I recommend that you read the post How to Send Emails with the Nylas Ruby SDK where we explain the basic setup clearly.
We have the title, date and time of the event. We also have the number of available spots, and we can enter a name and an email address.
When you press submit, you’re registered for the event, and see a confirmation message:
A few moments later, you get an invitation in your mailbox:
We need all of the information you can provide when you register, so it’s essential to fill out all fields. Let’s make sure we have some form validation in our group scheduling:
When there are no more available spots, registration fails:
And just to make it clear what happened, we’ll add a confirmation message:
As we want to create a Ruby web application, our best option is to use Sinatra, one of the most popular Micro Frameworks in Ruby. To install it, run the following commands:
$ gem install sinatra $ gem install webrick $ gem install sinatra-flash
Also, we need to install an additional package called Rice Cream. This package will help us get a better print output.
$ gem install ricecream
Once installed, we’re ready to go.
As we need to create the event, we’re going to create a file called event_generator.rb:
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Newsroom# frozen_string_literal: true
# Load your env variables
require 'dotenv/load'
# Import your dependencies
require 'nylas'
require 'date'
require 'ricecream'
nylas = Nylas::API.new(
app_id: ENV['CLIENT_ID'],
app_secret: ENV['CLIENT_SECRET'],
access_token: ENV['ACCESS_TOKEN']
)
# Get today's date
today = Date.today
# Schedule start time for today at
START_TIME = Time.local(today.year, today.month, today.day, 11, 0, 0)
# Schedule end time for today at
END_TIME = Time.local(today.year, today.month, today.day, 12, 0, 0)
# Create the event
event = nylas.events.create(title: 'Zumba Class with Nyla', location: "Nylas' Office",
when: { start_time: START_TIME,
end_time: END_TIME },
calendar_id: ENV['CALENDAR_ID'],
capacity: 3,
notify_participants: true)
if event.id
puts 'Event created successfully'
ic(event.id)
else
puts 'There was an error creating the event'
end
We can run this file by typing the following on the terminal:
$ ruby event_generator.rb
And the terminal output looks like this:
It’s important that we copy the id of the event because we’re going to need it later. Open up your .env file and add the following:
CLIENT_ID = "YourClientId" CLIENT_SECRET = "YourClientSecret" ACCESS_TOKEN = "YourAccessToken" CALENDAR_ID = "YourCalendarId" EVENT_ID = "YourEventId"
Now, we can also check our calendar to see that the event was generated successfully:
First, we’re going to create a folder called GroupScheduling, and inside we’re going to create another folder called views and another one called public.
Create a file called group_scheduling.rb with the following source code:
# frozen_string_literal: true
# Import your dependencies
require 'sinatra'
require 'dotenv/load'
require 'nylas'
require 'sinatra/flash'
require 'ricecream'
# Use sessions
enable :sessions
# Initialize your Nylas API client
nylas = Nylas::API.new(
app_id: ENV['CLIENT_ID'],
app_secret: ENV['CLIENT_SECRET'],
access_token: ENV['ACCESS_TOKEN']
)
# Main page with form
get '/' do
# Read session variables
@name = session[:name]
@email = session[:email]
event = nylas.events.find(ENV['EVENT_ID'])
capacity = event.capacity - event.participants.length()
if capacity < 0
capacity = 0
end
erb :main, layout: :layout, locals: { title: event.title,
day: event.when.start_time.strftime('%A %d, %Y'),
_from: event.when.start_time.strftime('%H:%M %p'),
_to: event.when.end_time.strftime('%H:%M %p'),
capacity: capacity }
end
# When we submit the information
post '/' do
# Set session variables
session[:name] = params[:name]
session[:email] = params[:email]
# Make sure all fields are filled
if params[:name] == '' || params[:email] == ''
flash[:error] = 'You must specify all fields'
redirect to('/')
else
# Get event details
event = nylas.events.find(ENV['EVENT_ID'])
# Array for participants
participants = []
# Get participants and add the new one
event.participants.each do |participant|
participants.push({name: "#{participant.name}", email: "#{participant.email}"})
end
participants.push({name: "#{params[:name]}", email: "#{params[:email]}"})
# Clear session variables
session[:name] = ""
session[:email] = ""
begin
# Try to update event
event.update(participants: participants)
rescue StandardError => e
# Capacity has been reached
erb :group_full, layout: :layout, locals: { title: event.title,
name: params[:name],
email: params[:email] }
else
# Successfully updated event
erb :group_confirmation, layout: :layout, locals: { title: event.title,
name: params[:name],
email: params[:email] }
end
end
end
In the views folder, we need to create four different files. Let’s start with layout.erb:
<html>
<head>
<script src="https://cdn.tailwindcss.com"></script>
<title>Zumba Class with Nyla</title>
</head>
<body>
<% flash.keys.each do |type| %>
<div class="flash bg-green-300 border-green-600 border-b p-4 m-4 rounded grid place-items-center text-red-600 font-bold">
<%= flash[type] %>
</div>
<% end %>
<%= yield %>
</body>
</html>
Then main.erb:
<div class="bg-[#315acb] border-green-600 border-b p-4 m-4 rounded grid place-items-center"> <p class="text-6xl text-center"><%= title %></p> <p class="text-4xl text-center"><%= day %></p> <p class="text-4xl text-center">From <%= _from %> to <%= _to %></p> <br> <img src="Nyla.png"> <br> <p class="text-2xl text-center">Currently we have <%= capacity %> available spots.</p> <br> <form method="post"> <label for="subject" class="font-bold">Name: </label> <input type="text" name="name" value="<%= @name %>" ></input> <br><br> <label for="body" class="font-bold">Email: </label> <input type="text" name="email" value="<%= @email %>" ></input> <br><br> <button type="submit" class="block bg-blue-500 hover:bg-blue-700 text-white text-lg mx-auto py-2 px-4 rounded-full">Submit</button> </form> </div>
We need a confirmation page, so we’ll call it group_confirmation.erb:
<div class="bg-[#315acb] border-green-600 border-b p-4 m-4 rounded grid place-items-center"> <h1 class="text-3xl">Thanks <%= name %> - <%= email %></h1> <p class="font-semibold">You have successfully registered for <%= title %></p> <p class="font-semibold">You can now go <a href="/" class="text-green-600">back</a></p> </div>
Finally, group_full.erb as we need a way to let people know that the event is full:
<div class="bg-[#315acb] border-green-600 border-b p-4 m-4 rounded grid place-items-center"> <h1 class="text-3xl">Sorry <%= name %> - <%= email %></h1> <p class="font-semibold">Sadly, there's no space left for you to join <%= title %></p> <p class="font-semibold">You can now go <a href="/" class="text-green-600">back</a></p> </div>
The last step will be adding an image to the folder public. Here’s the one we’re using:
And that’s it! We’re ready to roll.
To run our Ruby Group Scheduling application, we just need to type the following on the terminal window:
$ ruby group_scheduling.rb
The application runs on port 4567 of localhost, so we just need to open our favourite browser and go to the following address:
http://localhost:4567
If you want to learn more about our Calendar APIs, check out the Nylas documentation for the Calendar API Overview.
Group scheduling with Ruby is fun, but you can do more with the Nylas APIs.
You can sign up Nylas for free and start building!
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Blag aka Alvaro Tejada Galindo is a Senior Developer Advocate at Nylas. He loves learning about programming and sharing knowledge with the community. When he’s not coding, he’s spending time with his wife, daughter and son. He loves Punk Music and reading all sorts of books.