I've got the same underlying question. How does the Church feel about us passing these "screen scraping" tools around? That calendar importer sounds very useful. Members of our ward have also written several utilities to help us get more out of the Stake and Ward websites and MLS. Two possibly worth noting (and sharing) are:
A diff tool that compares registered LDS.org members' preferred names and email addresses with the same fields in MLS. Unfortunately, MLS and the Local Unit Web Sites (LUWS) don't share Preferred Names and Email Addresses. Members can update their 'Profile' on LDS.org, but none of those changes get shared with the Ward/Stake clerks and MLS. This tool points out the discrepancies. A script that generates vCard's (.vcf files) from MLS's Membership.csv, Organization.csv and HomeTeaching.csv exports. Our ward leaders use this to import Members' contact info into their favorite address book and sync it with their favorite mobile device (phone, Palm, BlackBerry, iPod, etc...). MLS comes with a Palm export, but these vCards are a bit more versatile. There are a couple other handy utilities we use too, but I'll let their authors offer them up. Like Stacey, I'm no professional perl scripter, so these could also use some clean-up by someone who really knows what they're doing. How does the Church feel about us passing these type of tools around? Thanks, -Greg > Hi Y'all: > > I just found out about this list and recently joined so let me introduce > myself first... > > My name is Stacey and my family and I live in the great state of Texas > just north of Dallas. I have been using open source pretty much since > the 80's when I was a student and systems programmer running BSD 4.2 > Tahoe on VAX 11/780's. Today, some things have not changed... I still > use BSD (Mac OS X) on my personal laptop, Gentoo Linux on my MythTV > (Tivo-like) box, and use Linux and FreeBSD for work. So let's just > say I have been leveraging open source to make my life easier for a long > time. I was happy to hear from a friend (Matt Probst) about this list. > > I hold callings as Stake and Ward Clerks here in Texas. As part of my > assignment I keep our stake and ward web pages up to date. This > includes the calendar, leadership directories, etc. I also track the > usage and schedule our stake building which is a job in itself given we > have four but soon to be five wards using the building, not to mention > the stake meetings that are scheduled there. In addition, I create > programs to help our stake leaders do their jobs. Our stake is very > large in both the number of wards and geography. We have 15 wards > (after Sunday this will be 16) and our stake boundaries reaches from > North of Dallas up and into Oklahoma. Therefore, I stake does not > publish a paper stake calendar nor do we publish a stake directory of > any sort. We rely totally on the Stake/Ward web sites that the church > has provided for this information. (Needless to say, we have saved a > lot of money in printing costs.) > > If you have used the administrator screen on the stake/ward web site > that the Church provides you may notice it lacks some features that > would be desired. One such feature is the ability to upload a calendar > that has been created, with say, outlook. Every year, when we do our > planning, our executive secretary creates the calendar in outlook and > then hands me the data to upload to the web site. After using the > limited input interface on the Church web site provides I decided to > create a better way. I wrote a simply perl script that uploads the data > from a CSV file. The script acts as web client and inputs the data into > the HTML/HTTP forms. This makes publishing a ward/stake calendar a snap. > > In addition, at the request of our stake presidency, I created software > that allows our stake presidency, bishops, and other leaders to download > the calendar data to their computers in iCal, vCal, or CSV formats. > This allows them to have the calendar in their palm pilots, etc. The > script is set up as a web application (perl CGI). They go to a form > that is hosted on a web site. Enter in what month they want, > which events (Ward, Stake, Churchwide), and what format they would like > (iCal, vCal, CSV). In addition, I require them to enter their LDS.org > login information. The script uses their login information to access > the Church web site so it knows they have access permission to do so. I > also created a similar web application for downloading ward directory > information. > > I don't know how the Church office would feel about this kind of > software but would like to share the code with the folks subscribed to > this list. Be warned, I am not a perl programmer by trade and do most > of my programming in the kernel and system level. Therefore, it could > use the talents of a real perl programmer to be cleaned up a bit. > However, it works great to make my job as a stake/ward clerk easier. I > have read on the archive of this list that the Church office doesn't > like the idea of "screen scrapers" given the risk of folks using, say, > the membership data for something like multi-level marketing campaigns > (largely an Utah thing, it seems). Therefore, if the Church doesn't like > the idea of me distributing software that does this then I will just > keep it for myself and my local leaders to benefit from. If they don't > care then I will make it available to the members of this list. Please > let me know the offical word about such software. Thanks in advance. > > Best Regards, > > -stacey. > > _______________________________________________ > Ldsoss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.ldsoss.org/mailman/listinfo/ldsoss > _______________________________________________ Ldsoss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ldsoss.org/mailman/listinfo/ldsoss
