alphagov / Calendars

calendars functionality is now provided by frontend.

Calendars

Serves calendars in a clear and accessible format, along with JSON and iCal exports of the data.

Screenshots

Live examples

• Bank Holidays
• Daylight Savings Time

Nomenclature

• scope: each type of calendar (eg daylight saving, bank holidays) is known as a scope. A scope has its own view templates, JSON data source and primary route.

Technical documentation

This is a Ruby on Rails application that serves static pages based on JSON files. It does not use a database.

JSON data files are stored in lib/data/<scope>.json, with a divisions hash for separate data per region (united-kingdom, england-and-wales, scotland or northern-ireland).

Each scope's data file contains a list of divisions, containing a list of years, each with a list of events:

{
  "title": "UK bank holidays",
  "description": "UK bank holidays calendar - see UK bank holidays and public holidays for 2012 and 2013",
  "divisions": {
    "england-and-wales": {
      "title": "England and Wales",
      "2011": [{
        "title": "New Year's Day",
        "date": "02/01/2011",
        "notes": "Substitute day"
      }]
    }
  }
}

The division title attribute is optional. If this is not present the slug will be humanized and used instead.

Dependencies

• publishing-api: this app sends data to the content-store.

Additional information

Publishing to GOV.UK

• bundle exec rake publishing_api:publish will send the calendars to the publishing-api.

Search indexing

• Is performed automatically on data sent to publishing api.

Generate bank holidays JSON

A rake task has been created to generate the bank holidays JSON for a given year. They need to be then inserted, and modified to take into account any additions/modifications made by proclamation. Run the rake task like this:

bundle exec rake bank_holidays:generate_json[2016]

Canonical sources

• For summer time, we can use the Summer Time Act 1972.

• Bank holidays are determined both by law and by proclamation. We use the following legislation: the Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971 and the St Andrew's Day Bank Holiday Act.

• The proclamations of holidays are published in The Gazette. Holidays are announced there 6 months to one year in advance, usually between the months of May and July for the following year.

Licence

MIT License