Re: Calendar / Scheduler in Perl

[blue_cowdawg]

I'd like to know how I can design this - any help/alternate ideas with the design and structure will be highly appreciated.

If you were my boss or a client (same thing really) presenting me with this requirement I'd call this an incomplete program spec.

• is this a command line application or a web application
• are we printing reports or emailing them?
• what is the user interface for entering data?
• is there a database involved?
• if not a database what type of repository?

and from the answer to those questions would probably generate more.

[vishi]

Apologies for not giving you guys the full details! Okay Here are the details:

• This would be a command line application only
• We are just printing reports on screen
• The data will be read from plain text files - One will have Person Names and the other will have a List of Tasks
• There is no database involved as of now, but if things continue to grow (either # of tasks or people), we *may* think of moving everything to a DB
• All the reports will again be stored as flat files (CSV perhaps)

This is precisely why I am looking for design ideas / suggestions ... I have the scenario with me; I just dont know how to put everything together. Moreover, we may have to deal with things like people taking the day off, vacations, etc. which will come later as a part of my algorithm.

I'm sure there are others who have had a similar problem and have implemented it in their own ways - I tried a search but got only topics related to 'calendar' and 'date' modules. Modules will come later - right now I am thinking of a good data structure to implement this idea.

I could use a list of lists too... lots of "possibilities" in my head right now.. but I'm really not sure which one works best; That's where I need your suggestions as I believe atleast one of you may have come across such a task in your Perl work...

Thanks Again!!

[blue_cowdawg]

This should give you a starting point.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my $OldIFS = $/;
$/="**";
my ($taskList,$assigns)=<DATA>;

chomp($taskList);
$/=$OldIFS;

my @tasks=split(/[\n]/,$taskList);
my $timeline={};

foreach my $task(@tasks){
        $timeline->{$task}=[];
}

my @resourceList=split(/[\n]+/,$assigns);

foreach my $assign(@resourceList){
        my($resource,$theTasks)=split(/[\=]/,$assign);
        next unless $resource;  # Deal with empty lines
        $resource =~ s/\s+$//;
        $theTasks =~ s/^\s+//;
        $theTasks =~ s/\s+$//;
        my @tasks=split(/[\s]+/,$theTasks);
        foreach my $task(@tasks){
                push @{$timeline->{$task}},$resource;
        }
}
foreach my $key(sort keys %$timeline){
        printf "%s\t%s\n",$key,join(",",@{$timeline->{$key}});
}


exit(0);
__END__
Task1
Task2
Task3
Task4
Task5
**
Joe Blow        = Task1
Sally Brown     = Task1 Task2
Jane Doe        = Task3 Task5
Sid Down        = Task2 Task4
Hoof Hearted    = Task1 Task5