Python + Calendar API: Automatically Generate Family Trip Itinerary!

Have you ever encountered this situation: the whole family finally manages to find a time to prepare for a spontaneous trip, but when discussing it, dad has a meeting, mom has yoga class, and brother has a make-up class… In the end, the plan falls through, and everyone is disappointed. Sigh, if only there was a little assistant to help us coordinate our schedules! Wait, why not use Python to solve this problem?

Calendar API, You Deserve It

We need a powerful ally—the Google Calendar API. It’s like your personal butler, helping you view, create, and manage your schedule. But before using it, we need to do some preparation:

1. 1. Create a project in Google Cloud Console
2. 2. Enable the Google Calendar API
3. 3. Download the authentication credentials (which is a JSON file)

Once we have done these, we can start coding!

from google.oauth2.credentials import Credentials
from googleapiclient.discovery import build
from datetime import datetime, timedelta

# Set up authentication
creds = Credentials.from_authorized_user_file('path/to/your/credentials.json', ['https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar.readonly'])

# Build the service object
service = build('calendar', 'v3', credentials=creds)

# Get events for the next 30 days
now = datetime.utcnow().isoformat() + 'Z'
thirty_days_later = (datetime.utcnow() + timedelta(days=30)).isoformat() + 'Z'

events_result = service.events().list(calendarId='primary', timeMin=now,
                                      timeMax=thirty_days_later, singleEvents=True,
                                      orderBy='startTime').execute()
events = events_result.get('items', [])

This piece of code looks a bit complicated, but don’t worry! It’s just greeting the Google Calendar and taking a sneak peek at the arrangements for the next 30 days.

Friendly reminder: Remember to replace ‘path/to/your/credentials.json’ with the path to your own authentication file, or Python will get angry!

Find the Best Travel Dates

Now that we have the schedule data, the next step is to find the days when everyone is available. We can achieve this with a simple algorithm:

from collections import defaultdict

# Count the availability for each day
free_days = defaultdict(int)
for day in range(30):
    date = (datetime.utcnow() + timedelta(days=day)).date()
    free_days[date] = 4  # Assume there are 4 people in the family

# Mark the occupied times
for event in events:
    start = datetime.fromisoformat(event['start'].get('dateTime', event['start'].get('date'))).date()
    end = datetime.fromisoformat(event['end'].get('dateTime', event['end'].get('date'))).date()
    current = start
    while current <= end:
        free_days[current] -= 1
        current += timedelta(days=1)

# Find all days when everyone is free
best_days = [day for day, count in free_days.items() if count == 4]

This code is like playing a calendar-filling game. We first assume everyone is free every day, and then according to the actual schedule, we occupy the time one by one. The remaining days are the golden times when everyone is free!

Generate Trip Itinerary

After finding the best dates, we can generate a beautiful trip itinerary:

import pandas as pd

if best_days:
    trip_date = best_days[0]
    trip_schedule = pd.DataFrame({
        'Time': ['8:00', '10:00', '12:00', '14:00', '18:00', '20:00'],
        'Activity': ['Breakfast', 'Departure', 'Lunch', 'Sightseeing', 'Dinner', 'Return Home']
    })
    print(f"Recommended travel date: {trip_date}")
    print("\nFamily trip itinerary:")
    print(trip_schedule.to_string(index=False))
else:
    print("Unfortunately, no suitable dates were found for the family trip in the next 30 days.")

Look, this is our fully automated family trip itinerary generator! It not only helps you find the most suitable date but also thoughtfully arranges a day’s schedule. You can adjust the activities according to your preferences.

With this little tool, you will no longer have to worry about arranging family trips. Just click the run button, and you can instantly get a perfect travel plan. Just think, once you master this tool, you might even help your neighbor Mr. Wang arrange a trip!

In fact, the magic of Python goes far beyond this. Perhaps tomorrow you will use it to automatically generate shopping lists or analyze your exercise data. Don’t underestimate these few lines of code; they might save you from a deep crisis one day!