Programmer’s testimony

July 26, 2007

Some time ago I decided to keep track of my daily activities and schedules using Google Calendar. What I need today is an overview – to check how much time I actually spent on a particular activity. I would like to check out how much time it took me to work on my client’s project, or how many enjoyable hours were assigned to playing basketball.

Recently I have come up with a few code lines which demonstrate how to start an integration of Google Calendar and Zend Framework. Today I decided to proceed with it and get down to the project again. I started working on Google Gadget, – a tool which is supposed to perform this kind of integration. Right now the gadget is capable of downloading the tasks from an average-size calendar, calculate the total work time for all the records in a calendar, as well as for the records whose titles correspond to a given phrase. It is possible to define several phrases. All in all, it seems to be a quite promising herald of a project that a wide group of net surfers might find very useful. The project is available at: http://code.google.com/p/task-calculator/ To find the gadget you need to go here: http://task-calculator.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/TaskCalculatorGadget/WebContent/gadget.xml. Speaking from my experience, this gadget has already proved its usefulness and sufficiency. I can easily calculate the time devoted to work vice versa the blissful hours spent on entertainment. Such “searching for lost time” makes me think about getting down to work and trying to finish this project… Anyone willing to join me and pay his tribute to the internet? You are more than welcome, the project is open, the license you need is GPLv3. Its temporary name is Task Calculator but, as I have doubts about that, it seems to me that Task Report would sound better. I am not sure yet.

September 27, 2007

Some time ago I began working on a new project – Task Calculator. Its function is to create a report which would sum up the total work time – I need such data for invoicing my client. The work time data are recorded in Google Calendar. The Project is still only a proof of concept – the concept itself proved right, the calculator does all the counting – however, there are still a couple of issues to be improved.

In order to start the calendar you obviously need to have your account in Google. The Task Calculator works as a gadget embedded on Google Home Page. First you have to search for the private address of XML calendar in calendar settings.

Next you need to install the gadget Taks Calculator – click here. Then you copy the URL address from Google Calendar and place it the gadget settings. There is a possibility of adding the key words, which will appear in a report.

If everything works fine, you will see the following report on a monitor.

Now you can view the summary, the monthly report or the listing of all tasks. You are welcome to use the calculator!