Integration for ChurchSuite is a plugin to enable display of data from ChurchSuite JSON feeds

Alwyn Barry

Javascript Integration for ChurchSuite

JS Integration for ChurchSuite is provides ChurchSuite event and smallgroup details for display in a Wordpress website.

Blocks for ChurchSuite

Blocks For ChurchSuite is a plugin providing blocks that enable display of event and small group data from ChurchSuite in various ways.

Integration for ChurchSuite (AKA CS Integration) allows you to display certain 
data from ChurchSuite on your WordPress website without resorting to embedding 
iframes. This plugin provides shortcodes that are easy to drop into any page 
or post. Each shortcode will, behind the scenes, request data from your 
ChurchSuite feed, and will display the data returned in a similar way to the 
usual ChurchSuite iframes, but natively to your website. Many aspects of the 
display can be modified in your theme to make the display match your website 
theme. The shortcodes allow you to use a range of query parameters so that you 
can display just the data you want for each part of your website.
<h3>Current features include:</h3>
<ul>
<li>Shortcode to return events as ‘cards’ with the event image and details</li>
<li>Shortcode to return events in a ‘list’ group by date</li>
<li>Shortcode to return a full month calendar, for the current month or a date</li>
<li>Shortcode to return groups as ‘cards’ with the group image and details</li>
<li>All API requests are cached with a 4 hour cache to ensure fast performance</li>
</ul>
<h3>A little Technical information</h3>
For the technical among you: This shortcode works on the ‘server side’, 
building the response which is delivered to your browser from churchsuite.
<h3>Difference between this plugin and cs-js-integration</h3>
We also provide the <code>cs-js-integration</code> plugin. That plugin uses the more 
recent v3 ChurchSuite API which does not permit such flexibility because it 
requires you to create a ChurchSuite ’embed configuration’ to pass in the 
shortcode call. It also does all the work on the ‘client side’ so that 
the client browser holds the cached data and the client browser creates all 
the html for output. That plugin use Javascript to create the response 
whereas this plugin uses php. This server-side implementation can be faster 
for many repeated requests, and is less speed dependent on the client 
provision. However the client-side implementation can be faster for an 
individual user. The cs-js-integration plugin uses Alpine.js to output the 
HTML, which means an end user could change the output by changing the HTML 
files without having to get into the php of the plugin. However, the 
Alpine.js code isn’t straightforward and so this is likely to be of little 
advantage. Really, it’s simply ‘horses for courses’ – you have the choice 
of which to use!
<h3>Difference between this plugin and blocks-for-churchsuite</h3>
We also provide the <code>Blocks for ChurchSuite</code> plugin. That plugin uses the 
older ChurchSuite API too, but also provides Blocks that work in the Block 
editor so that the information presented from ChurchSuite is configurable 
fully through the block editor.
We strongly recommend using <code>Blocks for ChurchSuite</code> rather than the other 
plugins – it is this plugin which we are maintaining more proactively.
<h3>Support</h3>
If you have a problem or a feature request, please send a message to the author.
<h3>Demo</h3>
Currently there is no demo site, but you can view examples on a church website:
<ul>
<li>the <a href="https://www.cambray.org/" rel="nofollow ugc">Featured Events</a>,</li>
<li>the <a href="https://www.cambray.org/connect/smallgroups/" rel="nofollow ugc">Small Groups list</a>,</li>
<li>the <a href="https://www.cambray.org/whats-on/" rel="nofollow ugc">Events List</a>,</li>
<li>the <a href="https://www.cambray.org/whats-on/calendar" rel="nofollow ugc">Calendar</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>Contributions</h3>
This plugin relies on information provided by ChurchSuite using their ’embed’ 
JSON feed. Details of this JSON feed can be found here:
https://github.com/ChurchSuite/churchsuite-api/blob/master/modules/embed.md
<h3>Usage</h3>
<ul>
<li>
For the Event Cards shortcode, place the shortcode into a page or post or 
into a shortcode block. The shortcode will be:
<pre><code>[cs-event-cards church_name="mychurch" num_results="3"]
</code></pre>
where <code>mychurch</code> is the name of your church and <code>3</code> is changed to the 
number of future featured events you need in a page or post. Use the 
parameter <code>featured="1"</code> to obtain only featured events. Because your 
calendar will have many events, make sure you include <code>num_results</code> 
to get the number of events you want.
If you want events on a specific day, use the parameters <code>date_start</code> 
and <code>date_end</code>. If you want events from a particular Calendar category, 
use <code>category=1</code> where <code>1</code> is replaced by the category number for the 
Calendar category you want.
</li>
<li>
For the Event List shortcode, place the shortcode into a page or post 
or into a shortcode block. The shortcode will be:
<pre><code>[cs-event-list church_name="mychurch" num_results="10"]
</code></pre>
The comments above about parameters also apply to this shortcode. By 
default only a maximum of 5 days events are returned, but this can be 
overridden by adding the <code>date_end</code> parameter.
</li>
<li>
For the Calendar shortcode place the shortcode into a page or post or into a 
shortcode block. The shortcode will look like:
<pre><code>[cs-calendar church_name="mychurch"]
</code></pre>
(where <code>mychurch</code> is the name of your church used to get into your churchsuite). 
The only parameter that might be used with this apart from <code>church_name</code> is 
 date_from which will can be any date which will identify the month to be 
displayed – so <code>2025-01-15</code> and <code>2025-01-30</code> will both display the month 
January in 2025.
</li>
<li>
For the Smallgroups shortcode, place the shortcode into a page or post or into 
a shortcode block. The shortcode will be:
<pre><code>[cs-smallgroups church_name="mychurch"]
</code></pre>
(where <code>mychurch</code> is the name of your church. The more limited set of 
parameters provided by ChurchSuite for small groups can all be used.
</li>
</ul>
See <code>https://github.com/ChurchSuite/churchsuite-api/blob/master/modules/embed.md=calendar-json-feed</code> 
for a full list of parameters that can be used.
<h3>License</h3>
The plugin itself is released under the GNU General Public License. A copy of 
this license can be found at the license homepage or in the <code>cs-integration.php</code> 
file in the top comment.

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