Meetalendar

TLDR: It allows the user to subscribe to meetup-groups events.

This gem presents all the needed functionality to search for relevant groups on meetup, remember the chosen ones and offers a task that can be called regularely to transcribe the meetup-groups events to a google calendar.

With the gem installed as described, it will have added itself to the admin interface. Navigte to it and find the two buttons that help you authorize the client with the meetup api and the google calendar api. After authorization you can search for Meetup groups via the 'Add Groups' button. There you will be presented with a search mask with some default values for the 'find groups' Meetup Api call. (Check the Meetup Api documentation for more options.)

Then click search and you will be presented with the found groups for your search mask. (Or with groups in the area if you entered to little information and Meetup took your accounts location info to find groups near you.) Then select the groups you want to "subscribe" to, enter the cities names that are "approved" and save them. With approved is meant, that only events of a selected group that are happening in an approved city are copied over into the google calendar. Thus avoiding "spamming", your google calendar with events that don't happen in the approved cities near you. (Most groups happen to meet in the same place each time while other groups events can happen to be spread out quite far.)

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'meetalendar'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install meetalendar

Then run this generator that copies over setup, migrations and views:

$ rails generate comfy:meetalendar

And lastly run the migrations with:

$ rake db:migrate

Or sometimes:

$ bundle exec rake db:migrate

These goals are still open:

• Introduce new view (and functionality) that allows to search for upcoming events of the already chosen meetup groups. There the user can select individual events that he wants to transcribe/syncronize to the google calendar. The view should list events up to round about 2-3 month in the future if possible.

• Is it possible to check if an event is a single or recurring one? (Meetup API V3 indicates that it is.) If so and if possible get single events as far into the future as possible (2-3 month) and transcribe them. The recurring ones typically don't have accurate information up to a week before they occurr so they can be handled as they are now.

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

How to get the Meetup OAuth2 Authentification set up:

• Go to the meetup web console to tab OAuth Consumers: Meetup OAUth Consumers
• Click on »Create one now«

I filled this page in like this:

Consumer name: Meetalendar,
Application Website: https://www.hicknhack-software.com/it-events,
Who are you requesting access for?: I am requesting access for my organization,
What is the organization name?: HicknHack Software GmbH,
Phone number: 0123456789,
Description: We use the Meetup API to gather IT-Events in our city and surroundings to display them as part of our Local IT-Event Calendar. Up to now this was done by hand and shall now be replaced by some logic. (The calendar is public and free of cost or commercial interests.),
Platform Terms of Service: Yes, I agree.,
Redirect URI: http://127.0.0.1:3000/admin

-> The phone number is random, please check our website if you want to do buisness with us.

With this altered to fit your company and everything setup correctly you might have to wait one or two days until Meetup grants you premission. (When i tried this it seemed to be done by hand.)

The Redirect URI only needs to have part of your website's adress to be the same. In my example i took the path to the admin interface. As far as i know this is used to restrict who and where one can be redirected to with a certain auth-consumer. When the Client sends it's authorization request to meetup it also sends the path to wich meetup is supposed to redirect to after. And if these pathes don't have the same beginning/host then it is probably a fishy request and needs to be ignored. (This path is editable after you successfully got your OAuth-Consumer. So if you aren't perfectly sure what path it will be exactly, enter a good guess and test if it works. If not edit it later until it does.)

When the time has come and your credentials are granted you will have to put them in the credentials.json, that will also have the google calendar credentials, like shown below.

Hot to get the Google Calendar OAuth2 Authentification set up:

• Follow this good source: Google Ruby OAuth2 official Tutorial Wich has a nice Button that seems to have a lot of functionaity. If confused it might help make things easier to setup. (Especially getting the credentials.json)
• Good general expanation: Source of belows steps -> That i "quopied" it's most relevant section:

_Setting up OAuth 2.0_

To create an OAuth 2.0 client ID in the console:
- Go to the [Google Cloud Platform Console](https://console.cloud.google.com/?pli=1).
- From the projects list, select a project or create a new one.
- If the APIs & services page isn't already open, open the console left side menu and select APIs & services.
- On the left, click Credentials.
- Click New Credentials, then select OAuth client ID.
- Note: If you're unsure whether OAuth 2.0 is appropriate for your project, select Help me choose and follow the instructions to pick the right credentials.

- Select the appropriate application type for your project and enter any additional information required. Application types are described in more detail in the following sections.
- If this is your first time creating a client ID, you can also configure your consent screen by clicking Consent Screen. (The following procedure explains how to set up the Consent screen.) You won't be prompted to configure the consent screen after you do it the first time.
- Click Create client ID
- To delete a client ID, go to the Credentials page, check the box next to the ID, and then click Delete.

Meetalendar will need get the credentials we aquired. It will know where to look when we have set the needed environment variable MEETALENDAR_CREDENTIALS_FILEPATH to point to the credentials.json file that we will create like so:

Correct annonymified example:

{
  "google_calendar": {
    "installed": {
      "client_id": "123456789-abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz123456789.apps.googleusercontent.com",
      "project_id": "testprojectidgoogl-123456789",
      "auth_uri": "https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth",
      "token_uri": "https://oauth2.googleapis.com/token",
      "auth_provider_x509_cert_url": "https://www.googleapis.com/oauth2/v1/certs",
      "client_secret": "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz123456789",
      "redirect_uris": ["urn:ietf:wg:oauth:2.0:oob", "http://localhost"]
    }
  },
  "meetup": {
    "client_id": "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz123456789",
    "client_secret": "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz123456789"
  }
}

Wich was created from the credentials.json coming from google that looked like so:

{
  "installed": {
    "client_id": "123456789-abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz123456789.apps.googleusercontent.com",
    "project_id": "testprojectidgoogl-123456789",
    "auth_uri": "https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth",
    "token_uri": "https://oauth2.googleapis.com/token",
    "auth_provider_x509_cert_url": "https://www.googleapis.com/oauth2/v1/certs",
    "client_secret": "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz123456789",
    "redirect_uris": ["urn:ietf:wg:oauth:2.0:oob", "http://localhost"]
  }
}

Basically the google calendar credentials where wrapped and put a nesting lower to allow the choice between loading meetup or google credentials. This allows to only have one environment variable needed to be set up and is also expandable for other credentials shall the need arise.

If you need help setting up the needed MEETALENDAR_CREDENTIALS_FILEPATH environment variable then find help from this friendly duck.